The handsome, dark-haired gentleman in the olive-green sport coat leans over the railing in front of “Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat” and stabs his finger at a face worth more than $45 million.
“Look, here, at the brush strokes . . . the way Van Gogh made the nose, he almost sculpted it with the paint,” he lectures his small group of companions. “Whatever his illness was, it didn’t show up here . . . even three weeks before he shot himself in front of this very same place. This was done the same week as `Portrait of Doctor Gachet,’ and it’s a wonderful picture.”
In any other gallery in the country — especially in a room that also contained works by Matisse, Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, Pissarro and Gauguin — a bell or siren surely would have gone off as soon the gentleman’s arm shot past the iron barrier. Not here, though. The guards know better than to interrupt Steve Wynn when he’s waxing eloquent about one of the paintings or sculptures in the Gallery of Fine Art in the spanking-new Bellagio resort, which, upon its opening late Thursday night, became Las Vegas’ most spectacular hotel-casino.
After all, as chairman and CEO of Mirage Resorts Inc., it’s his place and the masterpieces here belong to him and his company. Even if the 56-year-old Wynn wants to touch a painting — or even talk to one, which he admits to doing occasionally — no one so much as bats an eye.
The three dozen or so works on display in the gallery comprise the centerpiece attraction of the 3,025-room, 6-million-square foot, $1.6 billion hotel that has become the talk of the town and the entire hospitality industry.
Designed to imbue Sin City with no small measure of European elegance and the somewhat incongruous tranquility of Italy’s Lake Como, Bellagio towers over one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the Strip, the intersection of Flamingo and South Las Vegas Boulevard. At a time when a potentially cataclysmic recession looms on the horizon, Wynn — who also controls the Mirage, Treasure Island and Golden Nugget resorts — has dramatically raised the ante in a high-stakes game of poker being played by some of the highest rollers in the world.
Wynn’s heard all the speculation about what could happen if the economy goes even further south than it is right now, and he’s only too happy to remind pessimists that the 9-year-old Mirage came to life during a recession and became an immediate blockbuster success. He’s also been bombarded with unsolicited opinions on the $300 million art collection, and questions about his motivations — a tax dodge? a sideshow gimmick? a superficial ego trip? — for sharing the treasures with the 30 million tourists who visit Las Vegas each year and the more than 1 million permanent residents of the county.
In the foreward to the catalog written to accompany the exhibition, Wynn explains, “Bellagio had to be perceived as being `distinguished’ by people who would not easily be fooled by advertising or hype. That perception of a place of special elegance, quality and distinction is very hard to create in a cynical world.
“There are few areas of universal agreement about what is truly lovely, graceful or admirable. One of the subjects on which there is some general agreement — in spite of cultural, economic or social differences — is that of fine art.”
Over lunch in the dining room overlooking Bellagio’s cypress-lined pool area, Wynn points out that the foreword was written in response to journalists from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal who basically asked him, “Are you insane?” They couldn’t believe that tourists would pay $10 (which goes to charity) to see important works of art, when they otherwise could use the money to feed a slot machine — or that tacky ol’ Las Vegas (“Of all places”) would embrace his flight of fancy.
“My wife Elaine and I were in Chicago, visiting relatives and friends, when the Degas show was at the Art Institute,” he recalled. “There were lines down the street to get in . . . and it cost $15 for a ticket. When you looked at the folks standing in line, they were not effete snobs; they were Mr. and Mrs. America.”
Not only does Wynn believe that people will flock to Bellagio to see the great treasures (the collection also includes pieces by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Jasper Johns, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro, Andy Warhol and other modern artists), but he is confident they’ll visit, as well, the resort’s many designer boutiques and fine restaurants . The trick really will be to persuade those millions of Americans who’ve never considered paying a visit to Las Vegas to include it in their next vacation itinerary.
In fact, the profile of the average visitor to Las Vegas has changed dramatically since the arrival of megaresorts such as the Mirage, Treasure Island, MGM Grand, Excalibur, Luxor and New York-New York. Tourists are less gray at the temples than they once were, and, as of 1997, they now are spending more money on entertainment than on gambling.
One of the properties that has tourists gawking in amazement and anticipation is Sheldon Adelson’s $1.2-billion Venetian Resort, which promises to be the world’s largest hotel and convention complex. More to the point, it is attempting to re-create the look and feel of the Italian tourist mecca, right down to its historic buildings, canals, bridges, outdoor restaurants, singing gondoliers and swarming pigeons.
“This development is very similar to the Bellagio, in that — as an attraction — it depends on a sense of emotion, art and beauty,” said William P. Weidner, president and chief operating officer of the Venetian. “We’re attempting to copy the icons of Venice, and, to do that right, we’re employing something on the order of 100 artisans, who are re-creating all of the statuary, all of the quatrefoils and all of the pieces that you would see if you visited Venice.
“The artisans are just working in a different medium — polysterene foam — than Michelangelo, who sculpted Carrara marble. But essentially they’re doing the same thing.”
And he said that with a straight face.
Many of the artisans used on the Venetian project have been recruited from Las Vegas’ nascent art scene.
“There’s a community of artists building here that’s considerably ahead of the visual-arts public . . . they’re really go-getters,” suggests James Mann, curator of the Las Vegas Art Museum, which is housed in a Frank Gehry-inspired library on the western fringe of the city.
Several local news organizations have tried to stir up controversy between the local arts community and the downtown moguls — especially Wynn — but Mann, who moved to Nevada from South Carolina two years ago, isn’t buying into it. “In my point of view, the Bellagio is the best thing that could ever happen to us,” he asserts. “I think the city has to develop as a destination for cultural tourism because, sooner or later, the gambling industry is going to level off worldwide.”
In fact, Mann adds, “The day will come, I hope, I dream, when the casinos commission work from world-class artists and end up with murals and pieces that, in a couple hundred years, will be treasures of art history. I don’t know why that wouldn’t be possible.”
Mann and Wynn share the belief that, conceptually, today’s monumental resort-casinos have a great deal in common with the great cathedrals of Europe, both in the sense that common people marvel at the architecture and artists benefit from the money poured into the project by a form of aristocracy.
Bellagio, admittedly, is Wynn’s attempt to create the world’s greatest hotel. In addition to the art collection — which was assembled with the assistance of New York dealer William Acquavilla — the resort will feature an entirely new water-borne production by Cirque du Soleil, a nightly fountain show in the property’s 11-acre lake, and a multimillion-dollar arboretum in which the hotel’s flowers are grown, luxurious rooms and spa facilities.
Besides the masterpieces in the Bellagio Gallery, a pair of De Koonings hang beside the registration desk and several Picassos surround diners in the Picasso restaurant.
While the rest of Las Vegas is making the transition from a gambling-based economy to an entertainment-fueled engine, Wynn already has written the book on that subject. The man who first mesmerized tourists with his volcanos and sea battles, now thinks it’s time to turn down the volume a bit.
“The public today doesn’t want to eat or go shopping anywhere, unless there’s an entertainment component to their routine,” he says. “That can be something as overt and outrageous as the talking statues at Caesars Palace, or a pirate battle in front of the Treasure Island. Or, it can be something as subtle as a perfectly placed garden that is elegantly lit . . . stage set in every respect.”
Although he caught the “fever” rather late in life, his enthusiasm for the art itself — as opposed to the sport of acquisition — is palpable and infectious. Unlike many of his friends, who also collect great pieces, he takes great pride in the fact that he can expound at length on the history of a particular work.
“I stand in front of my Van Gogh, like I do in the Musee D’Orsay when I see his self-portrait, and I look in his eyes and say, `How did you know how to do this?’ I get transported.”
His greatest fear is that serious collectors will think that he bought his paintings merely as a stunt to build interest in Bellagio, and that he’s wearing them “like a boutonniere in (my) lapel.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to talk about any of the paintings until we could show them properly,” he said. “I didn’t want it to appear as if I was `Trumping’ another collector. I knew it would turn off every single person in the art world and I would branded the schmuck of all times.”
