The art of hospitality
London’s restaurants, hotels and retailers are transforming our appreciation of art
8am on a Monday morning and it’s devilled kidneys for breakfast. Nothing to see there. What’s more unusual is the self-portrait of Lucian Freud looming over the plate. Not to mention Turner Prize-winner Keith Tyson’s Still Life With Carbs sitting proud on the wall opposite.
Welcome to Mount St: the hyper-chic Mayfair restaurant owned by Artfarm, hospitality offshoot of global gallery behemoth Hauser & Wirth. Though beloved for its throwback British cooking, Mount St. is also feted for the provision of fine art dotted around its rooms. Even the cruets, brushed silver in the shape of a rounded tree, were created by the transgressive American artist, Paul McCarthy.
The point, explains Artfarm CEO Ewan Venters, is in changing expectations about what a restaurant can be, and imbuing these sometimes homogeneous spaces with narrative and character.
“Art sparks conversations,” Venters says. “Having the opportunity to sit among some extraordinary works alongside delicious food and drink is an entirely different experience.”
Mount St. Restaurant is just one of a crop of high-end London names embracing art. Mayfair’s recently revamped Beaumont hotel is a five-star gem. The past few years have seen the owners build a collection of incredible heft: There’s an original Magritte outside the bar and an entire suite designed by Antony Gormley. The hotel’s art inventory spans 600 pieces in multiple media, “each capturing 100 years of artistic, social and cultural change”.
Over to The Emory in Knightsbridge. Here, French architect and designer Rémi Tessier has filled the hotel with a score of works by Damien Hirst. Even luxury retailers are getting in on the action. Atelier Saman Amel – the made-to-measure tailor – has decked out its new London showroom with a rotating selection of contemporary works.
“With all of our physical spaces, we really think about them as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art,” co-founder Dag Granath explains. The collection bolsters the brand’s belief that a brand should have something to say within culture at large.
“You might start talking with a customer about clothes,” he says. “But once you get to know them you will also have conversations about aesthetics and culture on a wider spectrum.”
Invariably, this kind of curatorial nous is a cottage industry unto itself. Patrick McCrae is the CEO and co-founder of Artiq – a London-based agency that curates art collections for hospitality clients. By harnessing art, explains McCrae, his clients are embracing their ascendent roles as cultural hubs. “It’s about creating opportunities,” he says. “Together, we support an emerging generation of artists.”
That said, there’s no avoiding the rarefied status of this cross-pollination. A night in the Beaumont’s Gormley suite starts at £630, while Mount St’s signature lobster pie is a cool £110. But the effect is irresistibly cosmopolitan. By employing a mindset as holistic as it is aesthetic, the merging of art and hospitality has created a world of sparkling taste that money really can buy. With the right eye, that is.
