Kim Kardashian Joins the Art Basel Party Circuit

The best parties at Art Basel Miami Beach manage to pitch high and low culture against each other into a decadent social spectacle. Last week's boozy haze also broke the conceptual barrier between good and bad taste.

On Wednesday night, revelers piled into VanDutch boats and zipped across Biscayne Bay to La Gorce Island for the housewarming of the Russian art collector Maria Baibakova. The Mediterranean-style estate, once owned by Cher, is now filled with blue-chip artwork, including work by Tracey Emin and Louise Lawlor.

By 11 p.m., spectacle seekers swarmed the stage at the Raleigh Hotel, recently purchased by Tommy Hilfiger, to catch a glimpse of Miley Cyrus, who was also exhibiting her 'art' in a nearby tent. Wearing hardly anything but pasties and a silver wig, she was joined onstage by Wayne Coyne of the experimental rock band Flaming Lips and belted out psychedelic Beatles classics like 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' with props that included a giant rainbow, stuffed animals and a vortex of glittery confetti.

'Miley was so real! Thank you Jeffrey!' the gallerist Andrea Rosen posted on Instagram, referring to the event's Svengali-esque co-host Jeffrey Deitch.

By midnight, the after-parties underway included Horse Meat Disco, a popular gay club from London, held in Ian Schrager's new Miami Beach Edition hotel. Muscular men dressed in Viking drag and models in Rodarte fringed hot pants danced beside a neon-lit bowling alley and an ice-skating rink that was equal parts 'Great Gatsby,' Studio 54 and downtown art party.

The reality-as-performance-art revved on Thursday night with the highly publicized appearance of Kim Kardashian to celebrate her famous Paper magazine cover at 1111 Lincoln Road. Though Ms. Kardashian wasn't taking questions, she was overheard telling the magazine editors that 'It was genius' and 'It was so cool' several times before she left, less than 15 minutes after arriving.

Meanwhile, the swells gathered for a seated dinner hosted by the real estate mogul Aby Rosen and his wife, Samantha Boardman, in the Dutch restaurant at Mr. Rosen's W hotel. The hoteliers André Balazs and Barry Sternlicht mingled with the mega-rich Michael Ovitz and Peter Brant. At Mr. Rosen's table, Owen Wilson, the fashion architect Peter Marino and Vito Schnabel and his girlfriend, Heidi Klum, feasted on platters of lobster ravioli.

By the bar, Stacey Bendet Eisner stood near the reality TV star Bethenny Frankel, who seemed not to know a soul. 'Stick around till midnight and then it will really turn high/low,' said Ms. Bendet Eisner, who wore a floor-length gown in a print taken from a Lola Schnabel painting. 'You'll see everyone, from my husband's parents' - Michael and Jane Eisner - 'to a real housewife.'

And it was true. At the after-party at the adjoining club, the Wall, hosted by the famously surnamed Mr. Schnabel, Alex Dellal and Stavros Niarchos, it was pure 0.01 percent Euro disco kitsch. Women in Dom Pérignon glow-in-the-dark catsuits conga-lined around the room holding sparklers under the multigenerational swells.

But by the time the Dom Pérignon ran dry, the high and low had become sufficiently blurred.