Artist Barend de Wet has opened a hotel in Cape Town. But there’s still room for art, writes Chris Roper
People are used to artist Barend de Wet’s strange takes on art. A while ago, walking through Greenmarket Square, I spotted a display window with two eyeholes cut into its covering. Staring in, I was startled to realise that two eyes were peering quizzically back at me.
De Wet, taking turns with Peet Pienaar to squash into the small space, was having passersby’s reactions recorded, later to be displayed in the Joao Gallery. Highly embarrassing, having your bulging bug eyes framed on a wall. But his latest venture seems even more tenuously connected with anything to do with the big A.
It’s a hotel called Rooms, situated in Observatory’s Lower Main Road. You can spot the small, beautifully designed sign above a door just to the left of that haven from the crusties, the Obz Caf. Walk through the alley, mount the narrow stairs, and you find yourself in a small, quiet hotel with rooms leading off a central lounge space that faces on to a balcony overlooking the bohemian wash of life.
The reason I’m here is because rumour (the same rumour that incorrectly informed me the name of the piece was The Artists’ Hotel) has it that Rooms is the latest addition to the De Wet body of artistic work. I’m interested in why rumour is so insistent on these two points.
The eagerness to embrace Rooms as an artwork seems to stem from a need to inflict another scar on the (supposedly) smug facade of the conservative art world. Conversely, wanting an Artists’ Hotel reflects a desire for a community of artists, and a place to focus that community. It’s almost as if we’re trying to find our own Chelsea or Beat hotels, those famed loci of artistic energy.
The Chelsea Hotel, situated on New York’s 23rd Street, has been a haven for artists, musicians and writers ever since it opened in 1905. An impressive number of famous people have stayed there, among them Bob Dylan, Thomas Wolfe, Brendan Behan, Sarah Bernhardt (she used to bring her own sheets), Jane Fonda, Claes Oldenburg and Larry Rivers. Arthur Miller wrote After the Fall there, O Henry wrote short stories there, registering under a different name every night. William Burroughs produced Naked Lunch, Joni Mitchell Chelsea Morning, Arthur C Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey, filmmaker Robert Flaherty Louisiana Story – the list is immense.
Dylan Thomas died while staying there, and Sid Vicious killed Nancy Spungen there. The Chelsea has always been a refuge for those strange creatures that make up the artistic world, a place where the normal rules of life are warped or suspended. Patti Smith convinced the manager to take her and Robert Mapplethorpe in off the streets, on the strength of work they might eventually produce. The Beat Hotel in Paris has a similar mythology attached to it, and readers might remember the Joao Ferreira Gallery’s recent exhibition of Harold Chapman’s photographs of the Beat’s denizens.
Rooms is reminiscent of both these institutions. It’s a haven for arty folk, and because it only advertises by word of mouth, guests are generally connected in some way. On the walls are photos of everyone who has stayed there – including someone who bolted without paying his bill.
People like Karl Gietl, Peet Pienaar and Wayne Barker stare malevolently at you as you consume your cornflakes. According to De Wet, ”It’s decoration, but what I also quite like is it refers to when pictures become art.”
My first question to De Wet is a bullish one: how can he possibly call an hotel an artwork? Awkwardly, his answer is that he wouldn’t bother. ”I was going to make it an artwork, but I have a new theory, that I don’t even think art exists. Everything is art, so why call anything art?
”I’m now in the odd position of having to justify why I would call Rooms art, which is a neat little trick to play on a critic. It’s a case of ‘This is not an artwork’, rather than ‘This is a hotel.”’
But if De Wet were going to draw an analogy between Rooms and art, how would he do it?
”If anybody can say that any piece on Documenta is an artwork, then I can say that this is art. You can’t define art, and say it’s a specific thing. I don’t even have to be able to talk about this to make it art. But I could talk about it. I choose the furniture, how the beds look, how they get made, what lights to use, the colours of the walls, and what guests stay here. I took the pictures, I hang the pictures on the wall. Now I’m not an artist anymore, I’m a proprietor.”
So are the guests part of the artwork? ”You can look at it in different ways. I wouldn’t look at it this way, but they could be the audience, and they’re also part of the artwork, if you can call it an artwork.”
Does De Wet miss making ”traditional” art? ”It’s the same process as making a sculpture, you have to get the materials, keep them white, wash them, fold them in certain ways. I’m having an absolutely fun time, dealing with the sheets and the towels, seeing that everything stays clean. It’s like a live thing I often think, what I could also do is have an exhibition in a gallery, and then take these pictures, the couch, all this, and set it up in the gallery. Then that’s the installation there.
”Or I can take the towels from the washing, and they’re not quite dry so I hang them on the [rack], then it becomes a beautiful object, it looks like sculpture. It’s very nice for me, because the whole dynamic changes all the time.’
At Rooms, single rooms are R100 a night, doubles R150 per person sharing. At the Chelsea, single rooms start at $125 a night, and doubles at $150 a night. You might be tempted to see our homegrown mythology as cheaper in every way, but the Rooms Hotel is a fine addition to the cultural landscape of South Africa.