It must be summer, because the artsy jet-set and their Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses have materialized in abundance on the Greek Isle of Hydra, like the wild capers that grow from the cracks all over the island’s stone stairways. This past week’s super-event was the summer show at the Hydra Workshop, a waterfront art space that puts together an annual exhibit inspired by the collection of London-based art patron Pauline Karpidas, who flew in le tout New York (and demi-Dallas) for this year’s event. Co-curated by mega-gallerist Sadie Coles, the young artist featured this year was “bad boy” New York artiste Nate Lowman, who was in attendance with non other than petite amie Mary-Kate Olsen. (Coles’ hubby, fashion photographer Juergen Teller was also there — with nary a Marc Jacobs model in sight.)

The art this year was all about being self-referential: silk-screened portraits à-la-Warhol featured all the friends-of-Lowman crowding the Hydra waterfront (and saving everyone the trouble of having to look in the mirror). Many of the images were based on photographs snapped by John Shand-kydd (cousin-by-marriage to Diana Spencer), who, to keep things really meta, was also there, snapping away at the proceedings.

For more on this little fiesta, check out Rachel Chandler’s (self-referential) report at The Moment.

Click on images to supersize.

Before le deluge.

The show packed the crowds into the steamy gallery – some of them were even decked out in trousers. Fancy!

Here the artiste, sporting of-the-moment asymmetrical ‘do, confers with girlfriend/actress/grande coffee sipper Mary-Kate Olsen – holding a Diet Coke. (Loved your work in The Wackness, M-K! ) To the right, looking slightly dazed: Swedish photographer Hanna Liden.

“Do your balls hang low, do they wobble to and fro…?”

Lowman’s portrait of Pauline Karpidas.

The real deal.

Lowman, right, does yoga stretches while enjoying some chit chat with smokin’ sculptor U.B. Morgan. In the background, M-K holds court with Herr Juergen in front of gyro advertising.

Pandemonium was unleashed when this young lady tried to parallel park her donkey, almost mowing down the artiste. Quelle horreur!

Back in 1980, the Jewish Museum in New York put on a show of Andy Warhol’s 10 Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century. The exhibit, to put it mildly, was not well received. People publicly wondered what could possibly inspire an artist to make a series of portraits devoted to a single ethnic group. (Update: An oversight on my part: Warhol was commissioned to do this project. Though people still wondered what inspired him to take it on. See the comments section below for more info.) Hilton Kramer, in the New York Times, offered this terrifically melodramatic evaluation:

To the many afflictions suffered by the Jewish people in the course of their long history, the new Andy Warhol show at the Jewish Museum cannot be said to make a significant addition. True, the show is vulgar. It reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil. The way it exploits its Jewish subjects without showing the slightest grasp of their significance is offensive – or would be, anyway, if the artist had not already treated so many non-Jewish subjects in the same tawdry manner. No, the Jews will survive this caper unscathed. So, very likely, will everyone else. But what it may do to the reputation of the Jewish Museum, is, as they say, something else.

Whoa. Who says art critics aren’t occasionally a histrionic bunch?

Twenty-eight years later, the museum has once again gathered the paintings under one roof in Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered, opening Saturday. The exhibit includes all ten original silkscreen canvases (definitely worth checking out), as well as images of the photographs that Warhol worked from, tracings and original prints. There’s even a clip of Kramer’s review.

On the third floor, there is also an adjacent exhibition Art, Image, and Warhol Connections, that shows pieces by a number of Jewish artists that display Warholian influences. (Check out Devorah Sperber’s piece, After Warhol, a reproduction of a Campbell’s soup can made out of spools of thread.) Whatever you do, don’t miss the five-minute video of Warhol at the show’s original premiere in Miami, which includes interviews with Miami Beach grandmas wondering who the heck this Andy Warback is. Also included: spectacular footage of Warhol’s likeness carved in chocolate. Too bad the museum didn’t reproduce that piece for this show. It would have had great gift shop potential.

Money shots after the jump.

George Gershwin. (Because I borrowed this photo from the museum’s PR department, I have to include the adjacent legalese, or armies of Warhol Foundation lawyers might descend on my apartment and peck me into a state of unconsciousness: Private collection. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society, New York/Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.)

Sarah Bernhardt. (Private collection. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society, New York/Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.)

The Marx Bros. (Photo by C-M.)

Louis Brandeis. (Private collection. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society, New York/Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.)

George Gershwin and Albert Einstein. (Photo by C-M.)

Devorah Sperber’s After Warhol (2008), made with spools of thread and seen through an acrylic viewing sphere. (Image courtesy of the artist.)

Also: While you’re at the museum, don’t miss this video piece by Ori Gersht. It’s frackin’ gorgeous.

Posted by C-Monster.

Locust Tank by Nicolas Lampert. Image courtesy of Justseeds Visual Resistance.

• The NY Times leaves neo-Goth behind for a little straight-up Modernism, Renzo Piano style. And Nicolai Ourossoff digs it (mostly). All I know is that if I was a bird and saw those stacks of ceramic rods, I would think one thing, and one thing only: Nest.
• Jeff Koons’s bunny to fly at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Via Art Observed.)
• Artworld Smackdown: Art to Go versus Critics of Dealer-Funded Museum Shows.
• The racing form for the 2008 Whitney Biennial. (Via Art Observed.)
• Charles Saatchi gets a makeover. My favorite: Cowboy Chuck.
• More on the Dark Lord Foster’s canopy at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
• Soon to be on the cover of New American Paintings: Marci Washington.
• Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood: Kookier than ever.
• Reason #4,567 why television news sucks.
• In Vegas (yes, that Vegas): Las Vegas Diaspora at the Las Vegas Museum of Art.
• In NYC: Senso Unico at P.S. 1. and Ashley Hope + Mahomi Kunikata at the Tilton Gallery.
• In Oakland: Anatomy of Folkore at the Johansson Projects.
• In S.F.: Ten more days to see the Date Farmers at Fifty24SF.
• In Sète, France: Graffiti Stories at the Musée International des Arts Modestes.
• Who the hell needs Habeas corpus? Bilal Hussein, that’s who. He is an AP photographer who has been detained by the U.S. authorities in Baghdad for 19 months without being charged. They may soon get around to charging him. For what? No one seems to know.
• The day in graffiti crocodiles: Andrew Council’s Custard Factory in Birmingham. (Via Our Art Site.)
• Time lapse video of the construction of Manhattan’s New Museum. (Via The Guardian.)
• Is a copy of a copy of a copy as good as the original copy? Ask Warhol.
• Hello, Pot? This is Kettle.
• Prepare to celebrate: Buy Nothing Day.
• Photo Essay: Permafrost. Here today, gone tomorrow. Or at least sometime in the coming decades.
• Your moment of magical realism: when sports reporters lose it.

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