High culture meets hedonism on Hydra

As the ferry from Athens approaches Hydra, it crosses the Saronic Gulf separating the island from the Peloponnese and cruises along the coast that leads into the port. Before entering the amphitheatre-shaped harbour, the view from the left side of the boat offers a glimpse of a monumental bronze sun, its rays spinning in the wind.

Apollo Wind Spinner, by the artist Jeff Koons, is positioned where one might expect a lighthouse. Placed there in 2022, as part of his site-specific installation in the island’s former slaughterhouse, it was gifted by Koons and collector Dakis Joannou to the island, and is now a permanent fixture. Though we are far from Apollo’s sacred island of Delos and its hedonistic neighbour Mykonos, Hydra’s sun is a monument to its habitues’ own special decadence of choice: contemporary art.

The ferry docks amid a chaotic jostle of superyachts, a tourist one-day-cruise ship, sailboats, water taxis and smaller local ferries, each bringing a steady daily supply of visitors from May to November. 

In his poem Ydra, the great Greek poet, Nobel-prize laureate and Hydra lover George Seferis wrote: “What were you looking for? Why don’t you come? What were you looking for?” Every island draws seekers of some kind, whether of sun, parties, cocktails, culture or solitude. Those who come to Hydra are also seeking Leonard Cohen, Melina Mercouri, Henry Miller, Sophia Loren, Jeff Koons, post-Art Basel parties, concerts at the Old Carpet Factory, Hydra School Projects, the Hydra Book Club. But anyone in search of solitude should abstain; this is a social island, and has been for nearly 100 years.

In the 1930s, the painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghikas began inviting Greek and international artists and writers to his family home on the hillside atop the village of Kamini. Though the house burned in a tragic fire, the ruin remains, as do the stories of its illustrious visitors: Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor, Henry Miller, John Craxton, George Seferis and Lawrence Durrell. The near century of Hydra’s artistic and literary legacy started with this group of friends, expanded to include friends of friends, and has continued this way to the present.

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The current, very buzzy scene rests on this foundation. There is an authenticity in the relationship to contemporary art and literature that is strikingly unique. Today the “friends” that convene here include fewer beatniks and more collectors, art dealers and art stars. The camaraderie, however, endures. 

Hydra is without comparison. Sometimes referred to as “the Rock”, it is a dramatic, spiked and mountainous strip of earth rising fiercely out of the Saronic Gulf, one side staring back at the Peloponnese, the other facing out to endless sea. The port and Hydra town, and most of the people, live facing the Peloponnese – a view that procures a feeling of safety, as the mountains before and behind us seem to embrace rather than menace. The lack of cars adds a soft authenticity to the town whose residents (and visitors) stroll convivially rather than drive. The coastal path meanders along the cliff edge above coves where crystal aquamarine sea drops not far from shore into navy-blue depths. To the east, Hydra’s serrated mountain ridge gives way to a gentle slope punctuated by fuchsia bougainvillea and dark cypress trees. To the west, the sea spreads out to the islands of Dokos and Spetses, and the mountains fade into a gradient blurred by the heat haze.

The “other side” of the island is quite the opposite. Violently beautiful, dizzying, difficult to access, barren and with a more daunting, disorienting view to a limitless horizon. The terrain is treeless, windswept, sunburned, mystical.

The bustling port is the centre of activity. It is also where, after a morning swim, I have my daily dose of pistachio ice-cream with my friend, the artist and curator Dimitrios Antonitsis, and his dogs. Antonitsis would come to Hydra as a teenager. To preserve this tradition, he began using this “vacation” time to curate an ever more radical group show of contemporary artists in different stages of their careers, both local and international, in the municipal school. Hydra School Projects is now entering its 25th year. “I was seeking the simple life,” says Antonitsis. “All of this began with my desire to be with – to spend time with – my artist friends. I love [that kind of] vacation so much I made it into a job.”

For this year’s anniversary, Antonitsis will present the show Huit Femmes, a title taken from the François Ozon film. Antonitsis has commissioned, just as Ozon the auteur cast, eight female artists: an exceptional collection of Leonora Carrington’s jewellery, Chiara Clemente’s films, a triple video installation by Tschabalala Self with the support of Eva Presenhuber Gallery and the Pappas Family Collection, a performance by DJ Avantika, and work from Mary Hatzinikoli, Maro Michalakakos, Valentina Palazzari and Priya Kishore. The exhibition will occupy the open-air cinema and the High School of Hydra.

Stephan Colloredo-Mansfeld grew up on Hydra and has transformed his family home into a recording studio and art residency: the Old Carpet Factory. The house is halfway up the steep hill behind the port, its windows (the largest on the island) open to the expansive view. The cult vintage and rare analogue recording gear in the studio have made it a music industry legend.

Once a factory (hence the name), this year marks 100 years since the Soutzoglou family began making carpets here; to honour this shared history, Colloredo-Mansfeld and residency co-founder, curator Ekaterina Juskowski, will present an exhibition, The Warp of Time. Works by Helen Marden and Antonitsis weave – figuratively but also, in this case literally – the past with the present. The Soutzoglou family will present an archival carpet that was created in the house 100 years ago. Marden, in collaboration with the carpet weavers, experiments with carpet as a medium for the first time in her career. Antonitsis will show a series of his “loom-abacus” works.

I am the bookseller of the island. I, too, arrived on a ferry many years ago, not knowing what I was seeking. Over time I deepened my love for Hydra and its people through my research. I now present work written by the authors on the island past and present, including the visual or performing artists living and working here today. With my partner, Filip Niedenthal, we also publish Hydra’s own literary magazine, The Journal of the Hydra Book Club. 

The Hydra Book Club is on the top floor of the Historical Archives of Hydra, a stately stone building at the edge of the port. It has become, over the past three years, a home for locals and visitors seeking literature and a chance to meet other artists, writers and neighbours. (A few each year come looking for directions to Leonard Cohen’s house which, for the record, I do not share.) Many, more determined, come seeking my collection of rare editions. This was the case with Gilbert Halaby, a painter, poet and, it turns out, book collector. Halaby’s distilled visual vocabulary of blocked colours and houses resonates as carefully chosen words in verse. In October he will have his debut show on the island, called The First Harvest, in the museum.

Our table on the port is expanding. We move to the Pirate Bar, a Hydra institution, exchanging pistachio ice-cream for glasses of tsipouro. Just as the sunset washes the town in a momentary blaze of day’s end, we see an unmissable, bold graphic UFO slide into the harbour. The art collector Dakis Joannou has arrived. This is Guilty, whose exterior was designed by Jeff Koons.

“Boat” and “yacht” seem reductive words to describe this floating artwork. Joannou, too, never arrives alone; this year he brings the American visual artist George Condo. Each summer since 2009, his DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art has installed a site-specific installation or group show in the island’s former slaughterhouse. This year Condo will occupy the space with his show The Mad and the Lonely. The annual opening celebration, immediately following Art Basel in June, is generous and packed. It is as much a holiday as the other religious and historical celebrations that punctuate the island’s calendar.

This is Hydra: somewhat mad, never lonely. Introverts abstain. 

Correction: the video installation by Tschabalala Self at Hydra School Projects is also supported by the Pappas Family Collection