I don’t really feel like talking about this,” Mr. Schnabel said one recent morning at the hotel, again evoking the often evasive Mr. Starck. He was pacing the crowded lobby in sneakers, baggy shorts and a Western checked shirt, waiting for the delivery of the hotel’s estimable collection of plus-size art (much of it his own), adjusting the placement of the chairs and side tables (also heavy on the Schnabels) and generally helping to put the finishing touches on the $200 million project that has transformed the old Gramercy Park from a bastion of musty authenticity with wall-to-wall carpeting and Swedish meatballs in the bar.

Mr. Schrager was there, too, with his in-house architect, Anda Andrei; his business partner, Michael Overington, vice chairman of the Ian Schrager Company; and other essential and long-serving staff members. But though Mr. Schnabel’s friend Lou Reed would drop in briefly to view and praise the artist’s latest work in progress, Mr. Schnabel had brought with him only a small and quirky entourage: an assistant imported from Paris to perfect the French dialogue in his forthcoming film adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s book “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and his twin 12-year-old sons, Olmo and Cy.

Ever the rebel, Mr. Schnabel rejects the obvious term for someone who does what he has just done at the Gramercy Park Hotel. “I’m not a designer, but I’ve always built things,” he said. “Basically I’m a painter, and this is something that really isn’t that hard to do.”


- bill 8-03-2006 10:52 pm




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