[intro]Art Hotels Hit the Mainstream[/intro]

Art, the next big thing in hotels, Jonathan Jones declares in the Guardian. And that’s certainly true as you’ve seen mentioned here months ago. Hotels are indeed buying more name-brand art to enhance the luxury appeal and fantasy aspect of the hospitality industry. Jones, however, is clever enough to remind us that places like Provence’s La Colombe D’Or have been amassing their own collections for decades. Nonetheless, Jones begins with a big Twombly on display in New York:

The Gramercy Park is one of a new breed of hotels that give guests the ultimate fantasy of living with art, waking up in a room that is like an installation and having breakfast in what amounts to a private museum. […] Art, Schrager claims, is the next big thing in hotels. As many people heading off on holiday this month will find out – perhaps almost by accident, so common is the art hotel becoming – the Gramercy Park is by no means alone.

At the Atelier sul Mare – meaning studio by the sea – near Cefalu in Sicily you can stay in rooms transformed into elaborate installations by artists (one room glows deep red, another has a monster with a gaping mouth carved into one of its walls) at a fraction of the cost of a night in Schrager and Schnabel’s hotel. At Berlin’s five-star Marienbad Hotel, a new scheme invites artists to decorate rooms in return for a free stay – the hotel’s neon sign is by Glasgow artist Douglas Gordon. In fact, the Marienbad has a lot of competition in Berlin. The German capital’s vigorous art scene makes this a natural choice for hotels who perhaps also strive to resist the homogenisation of the once-bohemian centre of Berlin. Art hotels reassure those disappointed by the capital’s clean-up that the atmosphere of Berlin in the heady days after the wall came down can still be found. Thus you can also live with art at the Arte Luise Kunsthotel and at no less than three Berlin branches of the Art’otel chain.

A Night with an Old Master (Guardian)