I’m back in Bradford again after our holiday of several days in Leicestershire. I’ve returned to a day of medical appointments, personal correspondence and rummaging around to find out where the loose ends off my life have gone to. There has been little time to think about anything really, so that I am surprised to discover that one question keeps coming to the forefront of my attention in all of this bustle and confusion. Why is hotel art so bad?
I find that if ever I have to stay in a hotel there is always at least one picture in the bedroom, and the dining room usually contains several others. These are always, it seems, commissioned pieces by individual artists, even if they are reproduced massively. I am puzzling over the question of why it is that such work is almost invariably bad. It seems that its purpose is to relieve the monotony of a bedroom wall, but to avoid the the trap of retaining the active interest of the viewer for more than ten seconds.
Why is it not possible, when commissioning a new hotel, to buy original work from local artists?
The only answer I have been able to come up with so far is that the purpose of hotel art is to balance the task of reducing the monotony of the walls in a room with the need to avoid the risk that guests might steal the art. Any better ideas?