Conspiracy of Beige Paintings and Fake Sunsets

Nothing screams that you are a temporary fixture and passerby than lousy art on three walls.

I don't mean 'lousy' as in unentertaining, mildly off-putting, or bizarre. I mean it in the sense of forcing one to sleep early to escape looking at it as 'lousy.'

No matter how fancy or basic, every hotel room features art so bland that it could be used to hypnotize you like a rogue CIA project on the popular internet show, The Why Files. Sometimes, it could appear to be a targeted pain and punishment.

The art, not the show.

There I was, lying on the questionable comforter of a mid-range hotel bed, staring at a painting of a sailboat that seemed to mock my life choices. At some point, one must come to the solid conclusion that hotel room art isn't just decoration—it's part of a secret psychological experiment to see how much confusion and despair one human can take after an 8-hour drive.

Whether you're in New York City or rural Arkansas, the art is so eerily similar that it feels like part of an elaborate prank, hence my speculation. There's always a watercolor of a tree that looks like it gave up halfway through growing or a picture of fruit that couldn't decide what season it belongs in.

The so-called art hangs on the wall with a self-assessment of potentially being showcased in the Louvre, the Art Museum of East Pottersfield, or whatever. Maybe the goal is to make you feel too uninspired to steal it—or perhaps it's designed to keep you mildly disoriented.

An even worse variant is the smaller boutique motel that has been overrun and reworked in the vision of Aunt Sally, where everything appears to have been stolen from a redneck showcase. If you're really in the wrong place, Cabbage Patch Dolls from yesteryear will be present to mar your peace, like spending the night with a rural county Chucky.

These usually have color schemes like Discombobulated Peach From Hell, which is almost a peach color but more like the mud you found it lying in. So let's file that under Georgia clay gone wrong, and the trim will be somewhere in the verdant shade of Baby Poop Green for the hunter in you that is confused enough to think that it resembles camouflage.

This is relaxing if you prefer to sleep in a perceived duck blind without the fun of duck hunting or the peace of the outdoors.

Sometimes, we are willing to put ourselves through some level of insanity, I'll admit. When you are driven to partake in this madness, you only have yourself to blame, and I have to acknowledge that I have done this in the past.

Once, my ex-wife and I stayed in a small establishment that strove to do inventive and artsy things. We relaxed in a hot tub constructed in the room next to a crashed UFO. There were aliens in the room, Styrofoam at best, and our intentions for the vacation were thus thwarted by the creepy feeling of being observed by large, lifeless eyes and big heads.

We weren't sure if we were going to get a decent night's sleep or an anal probe.

They have since drastically changed to more normal-looking themed rooms. I'm glad they got rid of the Flintstones room. The Elvis one was bad enough.

The departure the next morning was with great haste. There were too many watching eyes in that place, alive or not, and we pretty much slept in our clothes.

There are unsettling themes in hotel art: endless landscapes, empty streets, or objects that seem to lack purpose. It's like they want to see if you'll start questioning your very existence after enough time staring at the painting of a blank meadow. Sometimes, the meadow isn't blank, and if you're unlucky, there will be a rusting pickup truck in said meadow that reminds you of where you are attempting to escape from.

All of this bolsters my conviction that hotels are running a long-term psychological experiment. The art is the variable; the guests are the test subjects. Will guests stare at the same piece of art long enough to find patterns that don't exist? Just like the coffee maker with its one sad packet of generic grounds, the art seems designed to remind you that you're not at home. You already knew that and didn't need the reminder.

Is the lonely lighthouse a metaphor for the human condition? Or did the artist just run out of ideas? You are in a hotel in the middle of the country and outside of a day from anywhere that would even have a lighthouse. What's the point? How does this abstract art affect stress levels after losing your luggage?

We must wonder if the hotel art industry is in cahoots with therapists, hoping to drum up business by triggering existential crises?

This all starts at the budget hotels that are too cheap to give you breakfast and want to make you grateful that you even have a roof to be under. They usually have a single, faded print of a floral arrangement so generic it could double as camouflage. This brings us back to the duck blinds with the general scent of Tandoori Chicken.

From there, we ascend to the mid-range hotels many of us are familiar with that upgrade to abstract art that looks like it was created by someone who had a lot of feelings but no formal training. You'll get a cereal box, or if they love you and you're in the right place, you can have a Texas-shaped waffle that helps compensate for the visual assault.

The snooty and high-profile spots have actual paintings but are still somehow devoid of soul. A $300-a-night room shouldn't make you feel trapped inside an art gallery that forgot how to be interesting.

You have no real money, hardly any time, and don't mind a temporary room with pets you didn't ask for; the motel is in your future. The art is usually just missing, replaced by mysterious stains on the wall that might actually tell a better story.

In the end, hotel art might not really be about art at all—it's about survival. If you can make it through a night staring at a crooked frame of a nonsensical beach scene, you can make it through anything. Because if I'm right, and this is all an experiment, I just hope they're giving me good marks for participation.

Next time you check into a hotel, really look at the art. Or better yet, don't—your sanity might thank you.