Photos: Michael Weschler for The New York Times

The artist Julian Schnabel is working with owner Ian Schrager to remake the dowdy 1920’s Gramercy Park Hotel in New York into a “cool” destination again. according to an article in today’s NY Times (registration required).

But don’t expect minimalism or the groovy 70’s revisited. This is a new, eccentric and baroque design direction, completing departing from the now tired clichés of over-designed South Beach/ Sunset strip hipster hangouts. It is also a departure from the polished, and sometimes antiseptic and clinically cool Philippe Starck designed interiors that graced other Schrager properties such as the Royalton in NYC and the Delano in Miami Beach.

“The Schrager-Starck hotels reshaped the landscape of the small urban hotel,” said Mayer Rus, design editor of House & Garden magazine, who has followed developments in Mr. Schrager’s empire for many years. “Now, in 2006, the world is littered with the hell-spawn of that marriage: every city has cheesy boutique hotels that primp and strain to convey their hipness in different, disagreeable ways,” he added, many characterized by “poor service, pointy furniture and poseurs galore.”

Mr. Schrager, never one to be caught too long off trend, agrees. “Those hotels are over,” he said, referring both to the imitators and the originals, which he no longer owns.

What category is this newest makeover? Paris Hilton expressionism?