Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Visitors to Deitch Projects in SoHo enter a hushed, chapel-like gallery space to see Kurt Kauper’s new paintings of Barack and Michelle Obama.

Instead of occupying the Oval Office, each member of the First Couple appears on an oval birch panel, looming large in the foreground of mundane suburban settings.

The dreamy mood of the paintings is at odds with their cutting undertone. The charismatic subjects appear stiff, wearing frozen smiles. The effect is entertainingly subversive.

Michelle, sporting a string of pearls and a yellow J. Crew- style dress, points her finger upward, as if she were a saint in an Old Master painting. The “Promised Land” behind her resembles a parking lot.

Barack looks starker in a dark suit and yellow tie. He is waving and smiling uneasily. Behind him are perfectly mowed lawns and cabbage heads.

Hovering between reverence and caricature, they suggest a strange mix of adoration and repulsion.

The paintings are sold together for $125,000. The show is on view through Oct. 31 at 76 Grand St. Information: +1-212-343- 7300; http://www.deitch.com

Casa Lever

The new restaurant at the landmark Lever House building in Manhattan, Casa Lever, opened yesterday with an Italian menu and 19 spunky Warhols on its walls.

Courtesy of Aby Rosen, the building’s owner, and the Mugrabi family, which has one of the world’s largest Andy Warhol collections, the Marc Newson-designed space now looks like a cross between an upscale restaurant and a blue-chip gallery.

Diners will munch under the gazes of stars and celebrities including a young, bearded Sylvester Stallone, Dennis Hopper in a cowboy hat, the former Empress of Iran Farah Diba and the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Other images include double portraits of Alfred Hitchcock, whose profile is outlined with red paint, a ravishingly handsome Giorgio Armani and Rudolf Nureyev, whose face is a patchwork of blue, yellow and green.

“They all liked eating pasta,” said Alberto Mugrabi, spotted recently at the opening of the new Gagosian store on Madison Avenue.

There’s also a young Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair writer who once worked for Warhol’s Interview magazine.

“I am a royalist, so I like Farah Diba. I am Italian, so I like Armani,” said Colacello. “I like pasta and I will have dinner underneath my portrait.”

Casa Lever is at 390 Park Ave. Information: +1-212-888-2700; http://www.casalever.com

Louvre in the Nude

Charlotte Rampling stands in the middle of the Louvre Museum stark naked in a picture by chic photographer Juergen Teller at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea.

A fixture of European cinema, Rampling has shed clothes in countless films during her five-decade career, including “The Night Porter” and “Heading South.”

Only a shade less pale than the ancient Greek sculptures around her at the Louvre, the actress, 63, looks like she could use a blanket and a cup of hot tea.

Teller, who has done campaigns for Marc Jacobs and a commission for Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, paired Rampling with equally pale and nude Brazilian model Raquel Zimmermann for the French magazine Paradis.

These are the large-scale results of the photo shoot: The two women sit languidly on a couch in the museum’s empty gallery, looking tired and fed up; they stand rigidly amid various antiquities; they smile mysteriously in front of the Mona Lisa.

Prices range from $10,000 to $20,000. “Juergen Teller: Paradis” runs through Oct. 17 at 540 W. 26th St. Information: +1-212-255-2923; http://www.lehmannmaupin.com.

(Katya Kazakina is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter of this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 13, 2009 00:01 EDT