| The Carlton Arms Hotel is described as an art hotel. There are a few other hotels in New York that make this claim for one reason or another, but the Carlton Arms is better described as a piece of living art, and as such is unique. This hotel started out as a single-room-occupancy hotel. During the crazy days of New York in the 70s, it went from bad to worse until it became notorious as one of the worst drug dens in the city. Since then it has gradually evolved, room by room, into an artists’ hotel. Every inch of it has been created by artists: bedrooms, bathrooms, and hallways. Today it continues to evolve with new creations by artists from around the world, as well as those based in New York. The crackheads may be gone and there have been no deaths in a while, but rooms can still be rented by the hour in the afternoon. | 
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Rodney Dickson is a British artist living and working in New York City.
Rodney Dickson, Heaven, 2005. Installation in Room 7C at the Carlton Arms Hotel, New York City. Courtesy of the artist.The Carlton Arms Hotel is described as an art hotel. There are a few other hotels in New York that make this claim for one reason or another, but the Carlton Arms is better described as a piece of living art, and as such is unique.
This hotel started out as a single-room-occupancy hotel. During the crazy days of New York in the 70s, it went from bad to worse until it became notorious as one of the worst drug dens in the city. Since then it has gradually evolved, room by room, into an artists’ hotel. Every inch of it has been created by artists: bedrooms, bathrooms, and hallways. Today it continues to evolve with new creations by artists from around the world, as well as those based in New York. The crackheads may be gone and there have been no deaths in a while, but rooms can still be rented by the hour in the afternoon.
The owners of the hotel have mostly remained the same since it started out. The manager, John, runs the show in his seemingly haphazard, comical fashion, and somehow maintains control of this strange place. His staff is similarly witty, and it is this motley crew that compliments the bizarre character of the building, which seems to embody sex. Somehow a cheap hotel, or at least this cheap hotel, suggests this kind of thing.
I first did a room at the hotel in 2005, the Apocalypse Now room. I created a version of the Saigon Hotel room in which Martin Sheen went crazy in the beginning of the movie, Apocalypse Now. From then on, I got to know this hotel and its personalities very well, including Magalie Geurin, a Montreal artist who had recently moved to New York. Geurin opened GVAS Gallery in Greenpoint and showed only work of a sexual nature. I don’t create work of a sexual nature, or at least I did not do so at that time, so when Geurin asked me to do a show in her space, I was challenged to come up with an idea. This is how I began collaborating with Geurin, and together we created Heaven. It was shown first in GVAS gallery in 2004 and later installed permanently in The Carlton Arms Hotel in 2005.
We decided to make a bedroom that would be inhabited by a fictional character that we named Patrick Watson, after our friend, who is better known for the Patrick Watson band. We imagined Patrick to be obsessed with Tanya Roberts, a hot blond actress of the 70s. The concept had something to do with obsession, the way that people admire famous people and can “fall in love” with a photograph of someone they will never meet. Like the way that people cried in England when Diana died: the kind of thing that is otherwise only done when relatives pass away. Or the way people cried when JFK was shot, or how people express some degree of love and longing for Elvis to this day. So in Patrick’s case, he loved Tanya and filled his room with everything he could find about her.
We imagined he was a painter, so I e-mailed some friends of mine in Vietnam images of Tanya and they did paintings of her for me. I enjoyed this international element of the work, and the fact that the artists in Vietnam did not know who she was. Some were even compelled to paint her to look Vietnamese. Their natural instinct was to paint people in that way, and perhaps they could not quite believe anyone could look otherwise.
We edited a video tape about Tanya, taking out only the bits from her movies of interest—that is, the dirty bits, more than an hour of dirty bits. The tape plays continually on the monitor in the room.
The result was a sexy environment, but more than sexual: it is sinister. The sense of obsession in the room is palpable; from the environment, it is easy to imagine the twisted individual in his sad and isolated world. Perhaps it could be the room of an insane rapist or serial killer…or maybe just Patrick and his girlfriend, Tanya Roberts.
