Oh, cool! I'm the guy who suggested this topic a few weeks ago. Didn't expect it to come so soon! I'll listen to it in the car on the way to work tomorrow. Thanks.
I worked in the fine arts for decades as a consultant to artists and doing art documentation photography. And I've been in a lot of hotels, hospitals, offices, cruise ships and looked at the art. A lot of this art, especially in hotel chains is generic, uninteresting -- until you take it all off the walls and the room is not only more boring it's more like a basement. And for some odd reason the art I've seen on cruise ships is incredibly awful. Especially the art auctions. But it doesn't have to be bad. I knew an artist whose partner was an art consultant to upscale hotels. Perfect opportunity. It might sound nepotistic, but it wasn't. Peter was a good artist and what I saw in the work he was 'mass producing' was exactly like Picasso does when he draws. Follow and develop ideas not on a few works but across multiple works. One of the best Picasso exhibits I've ever seen was an entire wall in the LA County Museum of Art of Picasso's Minotaur drawings. One of these drawings? Great, it's a Picasso, but dozens? Absolutely amazing. Peter could've put on an exhibit of 100 paintings in a row and you would see his ideas about color, shape, line, other elements being worked across the series. This I think is the right way to mass produce works of art. Sure they wind up as decoration, but as a photographer of art I know something else. I've often shown up to photograph a work, no information about it, sometimes not even the artist's name. My job is it align to a flat work, get the lighting even and color balanced, in focus, proper exposure, load and shoot a bunch of film.... So often I'm listening to an audiobook and just working. Many many times I'll suddenly notice something about the work I've not been seeing as anything but a job. A Tomayo painting, abstract figures not all that special. I had one of these moments. This painting is about negative space, and it's brilliant about negative space. So we notice art even when we don't notice it. Ever visit a marina and see all the awful boat names? All puns about drinking and fishing. And you can't not read every single one of them. Art's the same way (not the puns) we simply can't not notice it. And one thing I noticed about seeing four of Peter's paintings lined up together. They were all different. But in two of them it seemed he'd noticed the element of negative space and in these paintings he was working this idea. I'm sure he was more aware of negative space than I ever will be, but by seeing these works together they were even more interesting as a group.
Hotel art deep dive and yet not a single mention of DaFen? Seriously? In addition, those volume figures were very misleading. The real money in hotel art is high quality map prints and premium calendars.
Can you elaborate? As an artist- I’m interested in this topic because I’m considering pursuing it as an income stream. What are some resources, names and/or areas of research you recommend looking into?
Oh, cool! I'm the guy who suggested this topic a few weeks ago. Didn't expect it to come so soon! I'll listen to it in the car on the way to work tomorrow. Thanks.
Listened on the way to work, an extra cool thing were the interviews on the topic with the staff of Best Western, which is where I usually stay.
Thank you! I’m an artist and I’ve been wanting to learn more about and get into hotel art. You made my day!
This was excellent, enjoyed this podcast!
This is cool 🙏
I worked in the fine arts for decades as a consultant to artists and doing art documentation photography. And I've been in a lot of hotels, hospitals, offices, cruise ships and looked at the art. A lot of this art, especially in hotel chains is generic, uninteresting -- until you take it all off the walls and the room is not only more boring it's more like a basement. And for some odd reason the art I've seen on cruise ships is incredibly awful. Especially the art auctions. But it doesn't have to be bad.
I knew an artist whose partner was an art consultant to upscale hotels. Perfect opportunity. It might sound nepotistic, but it wasn't. Peter was a good artist and what I saw in the work he was 'mass producing' was exactly like Picasso does when he draws. Follow and develop ideas not on a few works but across multiple works. One of the best Picasso exhibits I've ever seen was an entire wall in the LA County Museum of Art of Picasso's Minotaur drawings. One of these drawings? Great, it's a Picasso, but dozens? Absolutely amazing. Peter could've put on an exhibit of 100 paintings in a row and you would see his ideas about color, shape, line, other elements being worked across the series. This I think is the right way to mass produce works of art. Sure they wind up as decoration, but as a photographer of art I know something else. I've often shown up to photograph a work, no information about it, sometimes not even the artist's name. My job is it align to a flat work, get the lighting even and color balanced, in focus, proper exposure, load and shoot a bunch of film.... So often I'm listening to an audiobook and just working. Many many times I'll suddenly notice something about the work I've not been seeing as anything but a job. A Tomayo painting, abstract figures not all that special. I had one of these moments. This painting is about negative space, and it's brilliant about negative space. So we notice art even when we don't notice it. Ever visit a marina and see all the awful boat names? All puns about drinking and fishing. And you can't not read every single one of them. Art's the same way (not the puns) we simply can't not notice it.
And one thing I noticed about seeing four of Peter's paintings lined up together. They were all different. But in two of them it seemed he'd noticed the element of negative space and in these paintings he was working this idea. I'm sure he was more aware of negative space than I ever will be, but by seeing these works together they were even more interesting as a group.
Hotel art deep dive and yet not a single mention of DaFen? Seriously?
In addition, those volume figures were very misleading. The real money in hotel art is high quality map prints and premium calendars.
Can you elaborate? As an artist- I’m interested in this topic because I’m considering pursuing it as an income stream. What are some resources, names and/or areas of research you recommend looking into?
@@jennebaram9881 - Do you have a website with your contact details?