For decoration, Italian restaurants usually featured a black-and-white Sinatra image somewhere; the French hung some weathered Gauloises or Toulouse-Lautrec posters; American joints created shrines to Elvis or James Dean; and the Greeks, of course, featured outsized autographed pictures of Anthony Quinn as Zorba.

Art was an afterthought.

Then Philippe Starck and hotelier Ian Schrager came along and created the modern boutique hotel and ultra-hip restaurant, with dramatic artwork contrasting billowing waves of white. They first reworked New York City’s Royalton Hotel and Lobby Bar in 1988, and perfected the style with Miami Beach’s Delano Hotel and its Blue Door restaurant in 1995. Along the way, restaurants nationwide began examining every inch of their public faces, and art became as integral to a restaurant’s concept as its food — perhaps even more.

Maxfield Parrish's “Old King Cole” mural at the King Cole Bar and Lounge in the St. Regis Hotel in New York City may be the most famous work of art in a bar or restaurant. The 8-foot-high, 30-foot-long work of whimsy was commissioned in 1906 by John Jacob Astor IV for the then-enormous sum of $5,000. For that price, Parrish actually used Astor’s face as the model for the King. The iconic three-panel painting, currently valued at about $12 million, took a beating from smoke and random alcohol flingings through the years, and underwent a months-long $100,000 restoration this year. Sipping a Red Snapper, the bar's signature version of a Bloody Mary, beneath King Cole's merry ’ole grin, is possibly the most elegant way of imbibing on the planet.

At the other end of the spectrum, in Little Haiti’s upscale, down-home One Ninety Restaurant, Chef Alan Hughes’ Argentine culinary flair is reflected in Juan Rozas’ wall mural, “Big Red Rhinoceros.” The mystical and airy surrealism of the work, according to Chef Hughes, delights diners almost as much as the food he serves. Marion Codner’s spare, small canvases on the opposite concrete block wall — painted with acrylic and, surprisingly, Malbec wine — add to the reflection. And when you're eating a rich dish like the Langoustines Wrapped in Prosciutto over Lemon and Asparagus Risotto, it helps to reflect a little between bites.

The Sagamore in South Beach calls itself “The Art Hotel,” a moniker indeed backed by an amazing array of contemporary works from around the world. The most unexpected is William Eggleston's “Tennessee,” a moody color photograph that evokes the vast sky of the South, the long emptiness of the highway and the comforting beacon of the old-fashioned Gulf gas station sign. It's a bold counterpoint — a lonely and thoughtful image displayed in a gathering place that discourages both. An amazing Jose Bedia sculpture titled “The Journey” appears as a couple in a rowboat and resembles an Alexander Calder stabile, in that while it is stable, it creates the illusion of movement and reflects the desire to move within the surrounding water. The couple and the rowboat seem to melt into other shapes reflecting movement, such as a sleek Ferrari or a Boeing 747 — a perfect metaphor for the hotel’s well-heeled, well-traveled guests. The hotel also is hosting the latest work of famed photographer Spencer Tunick, the master of the naked, which he recently shot at the Sagamore itself.

Back up north, at Wolfgang Puck's Spago outpost in Chicago, Rauschenberg and Rosenquist hang on the wall, dazzling diners. Their sheer ostentation is a reflection of both designer Adam Tihany's and Puck's penchants for over-the-top dining experiences. And in the landmark Frontera Grill, Chef Rick Bayliss’ homage to Mexican haute cuisine, hangs a small Rufino Tamayo etching titled Dos Cabezas (Two Heads). Tamayo's colorful mix of the indigenous and the modern, his mysticism and stark imagery, could also apply to the chef's commitment to a similar mix of the old and new in this great, yet somehow always underrated, cuisine. While 70 dazzling Rufino Tamayo paintings were displayed at the Miami Art Museum this summer, Frontera diners can look up from their Birria de Chivo (red chile-braised goat) on any Tuesday night and wonder if the full-blooded Zapotec, who later made his way from Mexico City to New York and Paris, might not have eaten this same dish at the turn of the 20th century in his home town of Oaxaca.