This article provided by START SOMA

SAN FRANCISCO ART HOTEL
ORDERED TO 'CEASE AND DESIST' BY LOUIS VUITTON

Hotel des Arts refuses to capitulate to corporate pressure. Continues to support local artists' FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS

SAN FRANCISCO , Calif. ,  April 29, 2005 - The Hotel des Arts is a small hotel in San Francisco which showcases the artwork of emerging artists from around the world.   The hotel's PAINTED ROOMS exhibitions have received international acclaim as one-by-one; the 51 rooms of the hotel are transformed into works of art.  To date, nearly 30 of the hotel's rooms have been transformed, painted floor to ceiling by some of the premier emerging + underground artists in the world.  The artists have been given free reign to create magic, and the project has been widely lauded as an amazing showcase of new artistic talent.

Until now.

One of the PAINTED ROOMS in the art hotel features a series of hand painted floor-to-ceiling murals by San Francisco pop artist Tim Gaskin.  Gaskin, whose artwork frequently juxtaposes celebrity icons with the iconography of contemporary advertising, included images of pop sensation Madonna, superimposed on patterns + logos from luxury product manufacturer Louis Vuitton.   The resultant work of original fine art is at once an homage, a commentary, and a critique of consumer culture and celebrity, and received a great deal of press coverage and attention.  Most people liked it.

Louis Vuitton's ANTICOUNTERFEITING DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAS did not.

The Hotel des Arts recently received a CEASE AND DESIST LETTER from Louis Vuitton's ANTICOUNTERFEITING DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAS.  The global multinational demanded that the hotel "immediately voluntarily remove all infringing depictions of the LV trademark from your walls".  The letter went on to threaten treble damages, attorney's fees, and criminal prosecution if the hotel did not acquiesce to a series of legal demands within 7 days.

The Hotel des Arts refuses to be intimidated.

"Removing the LV trademark from the walls of the hotel would necessitate destroying an original piece of fine art, and that is NOT something we are even going to consider," said Richard Singer, owner of the art hotel.  "Works of artistic expression are clearly protected by the First Amendment, and we absolutely refuse to be censored by a multinational corporation and their teams of fancy lawyers".

John Doffing, whose START SOMA art gallery curates the PAINTED ROOMS exhibitions in the Hotel des Arts, echoes these sentiments.  "We are taking a stand here, to prevent the chilling effect that such corporate intimidation could have on emerging artists and their creative freedom.  Tim's artwork, whether Louis Vuitton likes it or not, is part of an artistic tradition of appropriation, commentary, and fair use that includes artists like Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and of course, Andy Warhol". "I am just happy that I am not fighting this alone," observed artist Tim Gaskin.   "I want to spend my time creating new art, and not have to worry about corporate thought police telling me what I can or cannot paint."

The Hotel des Arts will NOT be renting the Tim Gaskin room for the next month.  Instead, the room will be open from 8 am to 8 pm each day for public exhibition.
 
Visitors are encouraged to take pictures.

START SOMA is an upstart art gallery in San Francisco with a unique focus on original art by emerging artists. Founded by high tech entrepreneur John Doffing in March 2003 as an antidote to the pretense + inaccessibility of the typical 'wine and cheese' art show, START SOMA provides an iconoclastic common ground for emerging artists to connect with new collectors.  Since its inception, START SOMA has featured the work of hundreds of emerging artists from around the world, and showcased several thousand original works of art - from painting, sculpture, and photography to interactive installations, video art, and new media pieces.