When the gifted Australian actor Russell Crowe threw a telephone at an American hotel desk clerk, I sent him a letter of congratulation. As one might expect in a wonderful but barmy country like America, the desk clerk became an overnight millionaire. I have just completed a 15-week theatre tour of the US, so I have been in a lot of hotels and been tempted in nearly all of them to maim, and possibly even disembowel, arrogant illegal aliens loitering behind computer screens at the front desk, or impersonating waiters, or gender non-specific ‘servers’, as waiters quaintly prefer to be called. The stupidity and ‘attitude’ of most receptionists in designer boutique American hotels would test the sanity and patience of Prince Charles, who is, without doubt, the best-mannered man in the world.
Most hotels now have ‘spas’, a fancy name for a swimming pool and an often whiffy steam-room. To make it seem more oasis-like, loud New Age muzak relentlessly percolates, and one can’t have a massage without having to listen to Pan-pipes, gamelans and exotic bird calls. Not seldom, each swimming pool contains a lone Band-Aid adhering to its turquoise bottom. The other day I was lolling by a pool in Arizona, reading yet another irresistible Venetian mystery by Donna Leon and, sure enough, staring at me from the depths of this ‘infinity’ pool and magnified by the glassy surface was yet another undulating Band-Aid with a sanguine and saffron blob on its gauze. This unwelcome submarine garnish is now as ubiquitous as that inexplicable fleck of blood on the bedside lampshade, and the faint but unmistakable hieroglyphs on the bed-head engraved by the toenails of enraptured honeymoon couples and adulterous conference delegates.
The rich and powerful are disappointing in so many other ways. When one occasionally visits them at home, why are their pictures so bad, their books so few and their ties so unenviable? Of course the rich and famous don’t wear ties any more. It is the Ensign of the Underling; it is an article of apparel now only donned by a concierge or a maître d’. When I recently visited the offices of Disney in Los Angeles, only the interns wore suits and ties; the executive staff wore designer jeans and polo shirts; and on the presidential level they just wore sweatpants and flip-flops as they sucked down the latest low-carb frappuccino from Starbucks.
Even the smaller provincial galleries in America contain unexpected treasures. A Daumier in St Petersburg, Florida, a Pechstein in Rochester, New York, an early Picasso in Buffalo; and one small museum I visited proudly displayed its permanent collection of contemporary art. Contemporary means American, and there were the usual suspects: the Basquiat graffiti, the Schnabel broken teacups, Motherwell’s slapdash black testicles, the guy who paints the canvas one flat colour, the chap who puts a vertical coloured stripe down the side and the other fellow who does the same horizontally. There was the neon tube, of course, the video installation, and the bloke who just prints a few infantile words across the canvas. The museum was swarming with school kids, all being led around the ‘artworks’ by a dykey-looking teacher. They squatted in semi-circles in front of the exhibits, presumably obliged to write down their thoughts and impressions. All were excruciatingly bored in the toxic presence of objects which betrayed no trace of joy in their making, no hint of imagination, skill or even talent. What were they writing, I wondered? I noticed that one little Afro-American ragamuffin was covering the page with crudely pencilled loops and circles. Was he doing a Twombly? I loitered closer to overhear their ratbag preceptor. At her behest, the class were inscribing in their exercise books and on their sketchpads the most astonishing thing that all these works had in common, their cost: $3.5 million, $6 million, $17 million.... The kiddies were learning the central truth of contemporary American art.