CHAPTER 10
Learning from Las Vegas Redux: Steve Wynn and the New Business of Art Dorothy Barenscott
In 1972, when architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour traveled to Las Vegas to undertake what would become one of the boldest indictments of modernism and traditional notions of built space, they dared to approach the urban environment of the Las Vegas Strip on its own terms. Learning From Las Vegas became one of the most significant texts heralding the postmodern turn—a treatise that not only called for a re-examination of foundational thinking around the city and architecture, but also an invitation to view and apprehend the spaces of the city as a field of aesthetic relationships, receptive and open to changing cultural signs and cues, tastes, notions of beauty, embodied experiences, and the like. “To question how we look at things” argued the book’s authors is a way of becoming “revolutionary.”1 Two decades later in the 1990s, when American businessman, casino magnate, and art collector Steve Wynn systematically began the wholesale transformation of his business—taking the casino hotel experience from
D. Barenscott (B) Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC, Canada e-mail: dorothy.barenscott@kpu.ca © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Blair and N. Bronstein (eds.), The Politics of Spatial Transgressions in the Arts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55389-0_10
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gaudy, rudimentary, and transactional, to elegant, immersive, and sensational—he would undertake a similar re-envisioning of the city’s landscape and spatial relationships, gambling, quite literally, on the idea that the placement of his private art collection into the public areas and design sensibilities of his hotels could revolutionize the Las Vegas experience. Critically, fine art, aesthetics, and accessible connoisseurship, were centerpieces of this rebranding exercise. Setting out with a team of designers, architects, and art experts, Wynn oversaw every last detail of each of his hotels. And with a private art collection valued at over half a billion dollars, Wynn’s influence on hotel design would eventually spill into the world of art collecting and exhibition practice, expanding well beyond Las Vegas throughout the 1990s into the mid-2010s onto the global stage. Amassing a constantly changing stable of iconic works by coveted artists, Wynn not only joined the ranks of the world’s most prolific art collectors, but he would become as famous for his art collection as he was for placing and integrating many of his most prized objects on public display in his properties. Steve Wynn’s desire to trade in the symbolic capital around which the art world operates arguably became the guiding principal of his entire business model. And it is through a chronological examination of episodes related to Wynn’s art collecting, design philosophy, and exhibition practices “Vegas Style,” that it is possible to unpack powerful configurations, conflations, and meaning making mechanisms that can be taken from the world of Wynn’s casino hotels as they collide and intersect with the shifting dynamics of high art exhibition and the art world at large. At the core of the analysis are questions of how, and to what ends, the rebranding of Las Vegas via art and spatial aesthetics brings us uncomfortably close to the present conditions of the art world, where esteemed art institutions seek to attract new publics and re-brand themselves within a shifting global art environment that is characterized by collapsing distinctions between private and public spaces and effaced spheres of influence.
Cultural Capital and Aesthetic Entrepreneurship Steve Wynn’s aesthetic sensibilities and collecting philosophy are strongly rooted in an appetite for design, and the creation of spatial environments and “wonderlands”—places where people go “Wow!” Wynn’s is also an uncompromising vision and is closely wed to a business model that seeks to introduce fine arts to the masses with the express aim of redefining
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the culture of Las Vegas for the twenty-first century. In a 1997 Charlie Rose interview, Wynn explained his understanding of how art activated the collective imagination: “I think of the relationship of fine arts to the psyche of the citizens of the world today, and I am convinced that this is not an esoteric, affected kind of thing for the very few who are dilettantes that go to museums. I think that fine arts have a powerful bedrock kind of appeal.” Wynn went on to reference urban culture directly, stating how “the complexities of urban life are rolling over all of us” suggesting how art had the capacity to awaken and revive another part of collective perception (Wynn 1997).2 Wynn’s larger vision was therefore to construct special spaces of interaction, public and private, where people could engage and commune more directly with art. Wynn, however, was not the first to think about art’s powerful role in capturing the attention and imagination of the Las Vegas consumer. His ideas were borne, in part, through close observation of Las Vegas’s first generation of themed landmark casino hotels, notably Caesars Palace. Originally built in 1966 by Jay Sarno and Stanley Mallin, the property was modeled on the imposing architecture and scale of ancient Roman imperial buildings. Sarno, who Wynn has compared to entrepreneur showman Walt Disney and blockbuster filmmaker Steven Spielberg, was the visionary behind the hotel and created potent spaces inside and outside the property. Utilizing replica classical statuary, imported marble, gold leafing, floor to ceiling mirrors, trompe l’oeil, and dozens of private meeting spaces with unique themes, the hotel was understood by Wynn to successfully reproduce structural elements of Renaissance art and architecture.3 To this end, Wynn envisioned the aspirations of his imagined hotel guests united with his goal to spark their imaginations and desires through spatial aesthetics. As Wynn’s long-time interior designer Lee Cagley explained about Wynn’s vision for his hotels, “Las Vegas operates on the idea that there’s a possibility that I could be richer.. with permission to misbehave or be someone else… or try on an alternative lifestyle…Interior design is a way to make people feel valued and valuable.”4 For Wynn, this included using principles of baroque movement in casino design, a goal that Cagley described as “moving [lots of people] through big spaces—moving as if it they were part of a procession.”5 Architect and global entertainment designer Joel Bergman, who would later design Wynn’s first signature property, The Mirage, described Wynn’s desired spatial aesthetics in more practical and economic terms:
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“Wynn knew that the exteriors will get you in the door once, but the interiors will keep you coming back and back and back again.”6 In this profound sense, Wynn recognized how art and art spaces functioned as critical components of cultural capital. A term developed and popularized by late-twentieth-century French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that one can tap into to demonstrate their cultural competence, and constitutes a powerful determinant of a person’s social status and standing in society.7 The “worlds onto themselves” that Caesars Palace introduced to Las Vegas, and Wynn emulated, signaled universally appealing spaces that were a close facsimile of the special aura traditionally associated with cultural capital and the rarified world of high art and culture.8 This aura, or as Bourdieu more correctly defined as “habitus,” was the embodiment of cultural capital and therefore held great value as a profit-driving force for business. Media researchers Gregory Borchand and Anthony Ferri offer a complimentary analysis of how the entertainment cultures of Ancient Rome and Las Vegas operated as a form of “public welfare” that promulgated belonging. On the one hand, this public welfare could pacify and distract audiences from social and class inequalities, while on the other hand provide the illusion of participation, inclusivity, and access to a world far beyond the average person’s means.9 Historian Margaret Malamud, writing on the topic of ancient Rome in modern popular culture, posits elsewhere that the creation of Las Vegas casino hotels was modeled on Roman art and architectural design strategically “to evoke grandeur, tradition, and civic magnificence” and “to juxtapose popular and high culture images of antiquity” as a capitalist enterprise. Here, conspicuous consumption is given “a legitimizing veneer of classical culture, and spending money is made entertaining”.10 Within the context of the American Dream narrative, an account derived in large part from a tradition of western cultural humanism that values certain art and artists as the epitome of human potential, Las Vegas exists as a self-inventing urban place that reflects the pursuit of freedom, riches, beauty, and self-actualization that Wynn would come to shape and extol through his casino hotels. And this “aesthetic entrepreneurship,” as sociologist Michael Ian Borer describes, would also come to play a powerful role in the city’s evolution and global influence: “The inclusion of aesthetic as a qualifier for entrepreneurship is intended to demarcate the sensuous side of creativity that reaches beyond dollars and cents of
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economics and moves toward the emotions and senses of embodied and emplaced persons.”11
Democratizing Art, Legitimizing the Wynn Collection 1989–2000: The Mirage and Bellagio The intoxicating blend of accessible connoisseurship and spatial aesthetics that framed Wynn’s business model drove the creative network of architects, designers, engineers, and other creatives who would design and build the first of Wynn’s casino hotels—The Mirage and Bellagio—properties that would forever change the landscape and experience of the Las Vegas Strip (Fig. 10.1). Beginning with the development and opening of The Mirage in 1989, which made headlines for being both the largest and most expensive hotel ever to be constructed, Wynn began to upend the associations of the low market and tacky “sin city” Las Vegas with the lure of authenticity and luxury promised via fine art and attention
Fig. 10.1 Bellagio Model Makers, c. 2000 (Photograph by Robert Beckmann. Image courtesy of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)
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to design. Tapping into the powerful dynamic Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno have ascribed to the parallel between the masses’ reaction to art and their relation to real consumer goods, Wynn instinctively understood how consumption could become vicarious enjoyment of prestige, even if fleeting and temporary, tapping into a desire to keep up with the Joneses.12 As the first hotel to be built on the Strip in sixteen years, Wynn took complete advantage of the spotlight and spared no expense in introducing all of the latest and high-end technologies in hotel construction, interior and exterior design, landscaping, entertainment, and gaming. Importantly, most of these features were created for the public and not exclusively for casino hotel guests. The Mirage experience began on the Strip with an expansive artificial lagoon, cascading waterfalls, imported full size palm trees and flora and fauna, all meant to replicate an escape to an exclusive Polynesian island, complete with a volcano that “erupted” nightly. Inviting the public inside, The Mirage’s spectacular exterior matched its elegant interior with its signature gold and white design, and impressive hotel lobby and casino which brought tropical elements indoors through an expensive indoor garden atrium. An element of further sophistication was soon added with the introduction of the first Cirque de Soleil performances in Las Vegas, a significant move that, as lead architect Bergman described, “replaced the T&A shows every casino had.”13 Wynn would next embark on his own self-declared masterpiece, Bellagio, taking all that he had learned with The Mirage and his “beautification” of the Las Vegas Strip.14 Opened in 1998, with a construction cost of $1.6 billion and topping The Mirage in scale and expense, the casino hotel debuted one of the most luxurious and elegant resort experiences anywhere in the world. Rivaling the finest hotel properties in Europe and Asia and named after the exclusive Lake Como town of Bellagio, Italy, Wynn’s casino hotel boasted interior spaces designed with imported marble, the finest materials and fabrics, expansive botanical gardens and conservatory, and a ten million dollar custom designed Chihuly sculpture adorning the lobby ceiling made with over two thousand hand-blown glass flowers15 (Fig. 10.2). The Bellagio’s public showstopper featured an eight-acre manmade lake complete with choreographed fountains and a nightly water/light show set to classical music. Significantly, and as a sign of things to come, works of art from Wynn’s private art collection were also prominently featured in the public
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Fig. 10.2 Dale Chihuly Sculpture Fiori Di Como, in Bellagio lobby, 1998 (Photograph by Robert Beckmann. Image courtesy of University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)
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spaces of the hotel, influencing what could be described as Bellagio’s very special and distinct mise-en-scène. What distinguished Bellagio from The Mirage was the abandonment of any preconceived theme. It was not, as Bellagio lead interior designer Roger Thomas described, an exercise in “imagineering” design where one would write a story and follow a script.16 Instead, Bellagio’s spatial aesthetic was one-of-a-kind and evolved out of a desire to capture the animated discussions and brainstorming sessions Thomas and Wynn were having about their travels, ideas around the art they liked, and the drama, destination, and sophistication that Wynn wanted for his new and most cosmopolitan hotel. “We never talk about materials, we talk about emotions” recalled Thomas. “Give them a reality, a now that is so fetching, so alluring that they don’t want to be anywhere else and you’ve got them” Wynn said.17 For Wynn, exerting full control over the building and design of these two hotels, but especially Bellagio, not only meant having the power to consecrate works of art in his private collection, but also to do so through his claim to be an art patron first and foremost. Wynn’s love of culture, travel, the finer things of life, and the will to share those passions with the public were also understood by those around him to supersede any financial concerns or profit motive.18 Years later, at a preview exhibition of Wynn’s art collection at the Desert Inn (before the renovations on another of his hotels was complete) Wynn proclaimed “Nobody owns this stuff… You just have custody. The pictures are bigger than us, and we’re just the guardians.”19 This ideal, extended to the open access to his properties, almost as if they were cultural landmarks, with availability and access to his hotel rooms at a range of price points.20 In short, both properties were designed to extend this vicarious consumption of art, culture, and luxury. From Bellagio’s Michelin star restaurant Picasso that featured an array of the modern artist’s original canvases, to the public rooms decorated in colour schemes matching Wynn’s favourite paintings in his private collection, there was an uncompromising attention to design and aesthetics—all fastidiously overseen by Wynn himself (Fig. 10.3). The focus moved seamlessly from public to private space, where the experience of the hotel and casino interiors extended into the intimate settings of guest rooms. Wynn’s obsessive attention to detail, even at the expense of losing money, appears to have set him apart as a broker of taste in the name of art.
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Fig. 10.3 Picasso restaurant in Bellagio, c. 1998 (Photograph by Robert Beckmann. Image courtesy of University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)
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And while increasing access to art, culture and luxury inspired Wynn almost as a form of philanthropy—a way to counteract art world elitism and share works of art that would often remain locked away in private collections and far from public view—his motivation to legitimize and leverage the value of his own art collection began to play a larger and more decisive role in his business model. Indeed, what remained effaced to the public until much later in his career was how Wynn took full advantage of tax breaks that would build his art collection through shareholder money and the increased value amassed for his collection through exhibition.21 The most important step towards building legitimacy for his art collection while simultaneously taking advantage of the profit motive of showing his work to the public was through the creation of his own art gallery. Inaugurated at Bellagio’s opening, the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art was located at a highly accessible location near the hotel’s grand staircase and designed to emulate the look and feel of a worldclass art museum (Fig. 10.4). Overseen by art historian and curator Libby Lumpkin, a former University of Nevada, Las Vegas art history professor, the gallery displayed Wynn’s art collection to the public and partnered with other art institutions to mount exhibitions and display works on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. Therefore, while the Bellagio gallery was ground-breaking as the very first space dedicated to the exhibition of fine art on the Las Vegas Strip, attracting entirely new audiences to modern and contemporary art, it did so while operating within the framework of a decidedly traditional art institution.
Rise of the Curator and Collector, 2000–2008: Wynn Las Vegas At every level, Wynn attempted to emulate what the best art institutions in the world were doing and offer it up to a new audience. From the Bellagio gallery’s first blockbuster show featuring “Landscapes from Monet to Hockney,” to later surveys of Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams, and Alexander Calder, and shows on loan from prestigious American galleries such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Wynn upheld all of the expectations of a high brow art museum. These efforts were made further manifest through the extraordinary attention to detail that went into planning the exhibition catalogues. Using the same Italian publisher that Sotheby’s and the Museum of
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Fig. 10.4 Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, 2018 (Photograph by David Shane. Image courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)
Modern Art commissioned (right down to the choice of the most expensive paper stock), Lumpkin edited sumptuous catalogues that contained featured writings on par with scholarly essays from a who’s who of serious academics, art historians, and art critics. Importantly, many of these writings, beyond their legitimizing function for the Gallery, reinforced Wynn’s perceived status as an art world insider. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the inaugural Bellagio Gallery catalogue, went as far as to compare Wynn’s collection to those of Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon and made the conceptual leap to the improbable urban milieu in which they resided: “Now another remarkable American collection comes together suddenly in a place that seems less unlikely the more one thinks about it. Las Vegas is an international crossroads of dynamic prosperity—an Oz-like emerald city, a reminder of Renaissance Venice— whose reason for being happens to be the pursuit of pleasure. All pleasures are pleasurable, but not all are equal.”22
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Bellagio was also increasingly part of the public imagination tied directly to Wynn’s persona. The Wynn art collection and Bellagio Gallery, for example, made special cameo appearances in the star-studded Ocean’s Eleven (2001) movie and its sequel Ocean’s Twelve (2004). Julia Roberts playing Tess Ocean, the fictional head curator of the Bellagio gallery, is romantically involved with the suave and sophisticated hotel owner Terry Benedict, played by Andy Garcia, a character loosely based on Steve Wynn. As a result, the combined spectacle and profitability of the Bellagio gallery did not go unnoticed by the art world, nor did Wynn’s tactics to increase the perceived value of his art collection over and above any altruistic concerns. As LA Weekly art critic Jeffrey Vallance quipped in a review following the Bellagio gallery opening: “In a town where fake is the name of the game, seeing something truly authentic seems all the more unreal.”23 For her part, gallery director Lumpkin defended Wynn years later, citing his move to open the Bellagio Gallery and leverage the Wynn brand in the process as a revolution: “Contrary to what people thought, it was not intended so much as a shrewd business enterprise in itself, however, the gallery did generate an extraordinary amount of revenue. I reckon it earned the most money ever made in a museum, if calculated according to turnover per painting!”24 Perhaps not surprisingly, the art world would soon come calling to Las Vegas. In 2001, the Guggenheim Museum made its presence felt through a high-profile collaboration with the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, opening a Rem Koolhaas designed satellite museum on the Strip. Located prominently at the recently opened Venetian hotel—a competing resort casino built by Wynn’s business rival Sheldon Adelson—the museum, nicknamed the “Jewel Box,” attempted to capitalize on the same formula for success seen at the Bellagio Gallery. Yet in the end, the museum could not duplicate Wynn’s success (closing by 2008). In the interim, Bellagio only continued to gain in global popularity as the premiere destination hotel Wynn had dreamt of, and the success of the Bellagio gallery was arguably part of a much broader and difficult to pinpoint phenomena that had more to do with the distinct branding, spectacle, and experiential spaces that Wynn had created. In other words, art exhibition was just one component of the overall Bellagio milieu. It is here that the rise of the curator in the art world at the same time as Wynn’s growing success with Bellagio cannot go unnoticed. As focus shifted in the late 1990s into the 2000s to the transformation of the profession, significant changes emerged in how the public was experiencing exhibitions and how
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art institutions could be transformed through new curatorial visions. As art critic Michael Brenson argued in his famous address “The Curator’s Moment” in 1998, all of which aligned with Wynn’s newfound role: “As much as any artist, critic, or museum director, the new curator understands, and is able to articulate, the ability of art to touch and mobilize people and encourage debates about spirituality, creativity, identity, and the nation.”25 At the same time, the spectacle of record prices in the art market continued to draw public attention and interest towards individual collectors as the Internet helped make public and circulate the outcome of art auctions. Notably, Wynn became far more involved in the organization and exhibition of his collection by the mid-2000s, and depended less and less on traditional legitimizing forces like Bellagio’s gallery exhibitions or consultation with art experts to grow his collection. Instead, he began a campaign to acquire the most expensive works of art at auction to bring back and display at his Las Vegas properties, beginning a shift towards branding his own name to promote his hotels and trading on his growing celebrity as a high profile art collector.26 Wynn’s evolution to self-branding crystalized with the construction of his next hotel. The largest privately funded construction project in the United States, the new casino hotel was originally to be named after Wynn’s most prized art object, Pablo Picasso’s Le Rêve “The Dream.” The oil painting, made by Picasso in 1932, was acquired by Wynn for $60 million in a high-profile sale completed in 2001, becoming the trophy in his art collection.27 But the slated hotel name Le Reve changed in the latter phases of the hotel’s design, evolving simply, but perhaps predictably, into his own name—Wynn. When the Wynn hotel debuted to the public in 2005, Wynn began to systematically and strategically divest from his more traditional art gallery model, removing his art collection from the Bellagio Gallery altogether and turning to a new form of luxury and lifestyle branding that intensified and more firmly integrated his art collection into the design and décor elements of the Wynn. At the core of these efforts was less the use of art to evoke accessible connoisseurship, as had been the case at Bellagio, and more of an intensifying focus on mood, light, feeling, and the senses, something that inched closer to exclusivity and more intimate and private engagement with tightly curated micro-environments (Fig. 10.5). Thomas, the lead interior designer of Bellagio and Wynn, repeatedly used the word “evoca-texture” to language what is often
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Fig. 10.5 Wynn interior, Las Vegas, 2008 (Photograph by Jim G. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
impossible to put into words when executing the Wynn design philosophy, described as “moments of experiential emotion that result in a memory so captivating and so unique that if you want to repeat that you have to come back.”28 “We all want to feel a little more powerful, a little elevated, a better version of ourselves whenever we walk into a new experience,” explained Thomas, “especially one we are paying for, and I hope that’s what we provide.” This extended to gaming and the way the player shifted their consciousness in a Wynn hotel: “Let’s not make it a table” Thomas explained of the mindset, “let’s make it your table” (Fig. 10.6). Such embodiment of the Wynn brand took form at every level of the new property. Thomas described attempts to use forms in the hotel’s pools that “almost seemed to breath,” and working lots of texture into the stone, woodwork, and even wallpaper in the private rooms. And on the use of art, the direction was far more unusual and experiential than ever before. As Thomas recalled: “I was an absolute Matissean in all
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Fig. 10.6 Dining Tables and Chairs on Red Carpet, Wynn Casino, Las Vegas, c. 2005 (Photograph by Ryan Grewal. Image courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)
of my coloring choices. So we decided that the accent coloring on this dramatic brown and white would be the palette of Henri Matisse, and we might bring that into the floor or we might dance it across a chair or we might put it in unexpected places. We didn’t want to put it in the regular places.”29
Globalization and Populism, 2008-Present: Encore and Wynn Macau/Palace Even as the economic downturn in 2008 hit Las Vegas very hard, it only intensified Wynn’s efforts to strengthen his luxury brand. While other developers were in trouble and even going bankrupt, he continued to pour large sums of money into his signature hotel that was constantly being updated and renovated.30 Key among these investments was Wynn’s retail partnerships in the ultra-upscale Wynn Plaza Shops (located inside the Wynn with Strip street access) that were vital to extending his
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design philosophy. Signing contracts with couture fashion houses, many of whom would never have before stepped foot into the Las Vegas market, let alone a “mall,” Wynn elevated his hotel’s exclusivity by brand association.31 Mirroring his retail procurements, Wynn kept up the pace of new art acquisitions to attract and keep people coming to his properties. Despite these additions, Wynn followed his carefully perfected formula of pricing hotel rooms at the intermediate end of market, just shy of full luxury hotel pricing, so that middle class visitors had a way to buy into the Wynn experience if even for a few nights. And by the time he was ready to break ground on his next hotel project located immediately adjacent to the Wynn, the aptly titled Encore, he had also discovered a new and altogether conceptual idea to pursue in its design. Wynn called it “Life Imitating Art” (Fig. 10.7). In attempting to describe Encore’s design philosophy, Cagley recalled Wynn’s directives and prompts for the Encore through an emphasis on
Fig. 10.7 Wynn and Encore, Las Vegas, 2008 (Photograph by Rob Young. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
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how an artist would see and feel a space, and how the art they produced would affect audiences. “Okay, I walk in the door. How do I feel?” Wynn would ask. “It’s not, what do I see?” He would continue, “what have you done to make me feel that way? Then ten more steps; now how do I feel?” This translated to design and spatial requirements, like layering light within a space, explained Cagley, to feel “like volume of air itself has light” and “manipulating space in a way that makes you change your perception of space…”32 Encore interior designer DeRuyter Butler also emphasized how revolutionary the property was for upending the norms of casino design and incorporating natural light into its gaming spaces, a preferred environment that Wynn understood as optimal for artist’s studios and also one “people naturally…like to be in.”33 Encore was also built with more exclusive and intimate spaces with access for VIP guests to their own part of the hotel, promising separate “food, gambling, retail, arrival, checkin, pool, everything within 120 feet…” As Butler explained, “there are certain clientele that like to observe but not necessarily be observed…It is a classification thing normal for society, people like to aspire to live better than the masses, so we give them the opportunity.”34 In the art world, there is a parallel in how the growing art market of the 2000s drove interest in art fairs and biennales as catered-to destination affairs, with tiered pricing, exclusive brand partnerships, and VIP events. Along with the increase in blockbuster art shows at world class museums featuring popular and bankable artists, these transformations in the art world closely mirrored Wynn’s business model to frame art experiences as a luxury good, available for browsing, consumption, and pleasure. Following trends in the art market, which were increasingly divorced from traditional influences of art museums, academics, and art’s past, it was also around this time that Wynn began to focus his collecting more squarely within the realm of contemporary art, fostering a special interest in the work of artist Jeff Koons. In 2012, Wynn made news globally with the purchase of Koon’s Tulips for $33.6 million and immediately made the sculpture the centerpiece of his hotel complex. Complete with a 24-hour guard to signal the value and importance of the work, the art object was conspicuously positioned in the Wynn Theatre rotunda where the Wynn and Encore hotels joined along the same corridor as the exclusive high-end luxury goods stores. In many ways, Koons and Wynn are in perfect alignment in how they regard art. Dorothea Von Hantelmann in her 2009 essay “Why Koons?” describes the artist’s ambitions as emanating from an avant-garde ethos to
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“redefine the function of art in society” and “to renew the social contract between art and society by opening art up to a differently structured and more widely conceived public.”35 Hantelmann goes on to explain that, unlike the historic avant-garde, Koons was not driven by anti-bourgeois critique. In fact it is quite the opposite. Koons wanted to rehabilitate the idea of art as an instrument for the self-empowerment of the bourgeois viewer—an idea that unites him with Wynn. Broader engagement and populism inform both of their motivations. Art historian Hal Foster, also writing about Koons in “The Medium is the Market,” published in the immediate wake the 2008 global financial crisis, describes his sculptures as “the ideal public art work,” presenting “a seductive mix of populism, at the level of the image, and exclusivity of ownership.”36 Exporting the Wynn brand would turn out to be Wynn’s next and most ambitious move. In a significant development that would be duplicated by many other developers, Wynn had replicated his hotel casino model with the construction of nearly identical Wynn and Encore hotels in Macau (in 2005–2010), followed by the Wynn Palace (opened in 2016). This appeal to “new money” in the wake of the impending economic downturn in the United States paralleled similar trends in the art world to grow the global market for art in emerging economies around the world. During the construction of the Macau properties, Wynn would once again raise art world eyebrows with the purchase of his second Koons sculpture. Popeye, purchased for $28 million in 2014, replaced Tulips, which was relocated to Wynn Palace (Fig. 10.8). Boasting the most extravagant and art-intensive interior of all his properties, Wynn Palace successfully duplicated the Wynn Las Vegas business model with important twists. For example, Wynn had learned through market research that it would be appealing to his Chinese clientele to feature a blend of traditional Eastern and Western art. For his centerpiece art statement, Wynn chose the high profile and record-breaking purchase of a set of 18th-century Chinese porcelain vases and a number of tapestries, purchases meant to signal his goodwill, altruism, and desire to return and exhibit Chinese treasures to the people of Macau. “I want this hotel to honor China” said Wynn.37 He also placed the more decorative Koons Tulips within the property, and commissioned nine stainless steel pop sculptures from contemporary Chinese artist Liao Yibai to round out his “East meets West” visual statement at the property. With a value of over $150 million, Wynn’s China-based art collection perfectly exported Wynn’s spatial aesthetics to a new aspirational consumer, targeted squarely
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Fig. 10.8 Jeff Koons, Popeye (2009–2011) was purchased by Wynn at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014 for $28 million and placed in the rotunda where the Wynn and Encore hotels intersect (Photograph by Dorothy Barenscott. Image courtesy of the author)
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Fig. 10.9 Wynn Encore Macau, 2011 (Photograph by WiNG. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
at the growing middle class of Chinese who were presumed to be seeking a kind of cultural capital or its Western-inspired habitus equivalent in a Wynn branded hotel (Fig. 10.9).
Conclusion: Las Vegas’s Role in Rebranding the Art Experience Meanwhile back in Las Vegas, the past decade has been marked with generational shifts and renewed focus on the emerging millennial consumer—an audience interested even more so in micro-environments, areas of exclusive interaction, and spaces that feel unique, authentic, and non-traditional. From day-time beach clubs and remodeled gaming areas (to include smaller and more intimate environments), to the creation of hotels offering “destinations within destinations,” and engineered spaces providing more opportunity for peer group interaction and access to
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live events, these are among the most profitable proven concepts first pioneered at Wynn properties.38 Ironically enough, it is precisely these kinds of experimental designs driving the renewal and rebranding of many of the world’s top art institutions and public art programs as they scramble to retain and expand their audiences. They also follow closely to the phenomena of contemporary art’s dematerialization in recent decades where space, affect, embodiment, and relational aesthetics take a central focus in art production and exhibition. Look no further than the most recent Venice Biennales where it is striking how entire pavilions are emptied of art objects and made into environments or overtaken by elaborate installations and platforms for performance and experience. The recent remodeling and reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in 2019 is another case in point—a project not so distantly related to Wynn’s hotels by design—that has reimagined the traditional museum space as one embracing a range of new modalities, visions, and possibilities to experience art. As lead art critic of the New York Times Holland Cotter summarized in his review: “In short, what’s primarily different about the reopened MoMA is the integrated presence of ‘difference’ itself— a presence that takes the museum back to its experimental early days.”39 To be sure, many of today’s seismic and spatial shifts in the art world were prophesized by art philosopher Arthur Danto two decades earlier in After the End of Art. “What we see today” argues Danto “is an art which seeks a more immediate contact with people than the museum makes possible… and the museum in turn is striving to accommodate the immense pressures that are imposed on it from within art and outside art.” Danto goes on to identify “a triple transformation” that could well summarize Wynn’s vision—“in the making of art, in the institutions of art, and in the audience for art.”40 Wynn’s design philosophy and business model have arguably led to an increased access to art and been utilized in public exhibition to be personalized, experienced, spatialized, interactive, and fully integrated into non-traditional places and spaces. Here, Wynn’s understanding of art’s role in society—to perform a kind of democratizing function that enhances quality of life for a wider audience—is modeled on Enlightenment ideals that call for broadening access, visibility, and everyday enjoyment of art and design as a way to individual betterment.41 Art’s assimilation into the everyday world is a goal we could ascribe to many avant-garde art movements from the 1960s onwards, yet it has also resulted in an art world and art market that is today defined by the global
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one percent. Indeed, the production and circulation of meaning around art has also been profoundly transformed by Wynn’s business model and we must all pay attention. There is a loaded symbolism present in the Wynn casino hotels, where infinite and visible wealth via public art and immersive art environments presents an illusion of ease, accessibility, and vicarious consumption for all. Critically, however, the reality of inevitable losses on the casino floor—the profit-making mechanism of all forms of gambling that concentrates wealth to the house—remain abstracted and go largely invisible to the public. Wynn’s business model and collecting style also reflects this reality, even as his entire fortune and reputation have recently been called into question with the #MeToo movement, a fate of unfolding and ongoing consequences met by many high-powered men of Wynn’s generation.42 In the art world, there are similar mechanisms at play, as selective branding, entertainment, spectacle, tiered access, politics, and donor and collector influence play an outsized role in the shadow world of art institutions, art fairs, and the art market. And so the questions arise: are we heading towards a more profit driven and bankable future of name-brand artists and art history that are determined by populist, art market, and collector appeal? Or, will artists, galleries, museums, curators, art critics, and art historians understand this as a moment to shape and transform, to give way and become open to new models of art production and exhibition that can co-exist with market and commercial forces? And how significantly is the art world today determined by a whole new configuration of spatial and aesthetic relationships that are only beginning to be apprehended, relationships first founded in a city and by an individual that have for too long flown under the radar of serious art historical study? Returning to Venturi, Brown, and Izenour’s call that opened this examination—to look more carefully at the spaces around us, and at Las Vegas in particular—it appears as though the topography of power is radically shifting, and there are still many more lessons to be learned. Acknowledgements This paper includes extensive archival research completed as part of an Eadington Fellowship in Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in April, 2019. Special thanks to Su Kim Chung, Peter Michel, Aaron Mayes, Stefani Evans, and Claytee White in the Special Collections and Archives at UNLV, and to Vice-Provost Dave Schwartz and Robert Tracy in the Art Department for their generosity and assistance with my research questions, and for helping me navigate the life and legend of Steve Wynn.
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Notes 1. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), 3. 2. Steve Wynn, “Interview,” Interview by Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, May 20, 1997. Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3kSpifvAds. 3. Comparing Jay Sarno to Disney and Spielberg, Wynn singles out “those people that create places” as his inspiration, and willingly concedes that if anyone changed Las Vegas, it was Sarno: “Jay’s concept of the destination themed resort redefined the city.” Steve Wynn, interviewed by David Schwartz, December 2006, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Oral History Collection. 4. Lee Cagley, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 5. Wynn and Cagley often discussed Michelangelo’s design for the Piazza Campidoglio in Rome and the way it “shaped the space” as an inspiration for traffic flow in Wynn’s hotels. Lee Cagley, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 6. Bergman recalls is his unpublished memoir how “Steve Wynn didn’t want to do anything that was remotely close to architecture. He wanted to do what was in his mind that would relate well to the potential customers he wanted to attract and he didn’t really give a damn about architecture at that time.” Joel Bergman, Whatever You Hear About Me Is True: A Memoir, 2015, original manuscript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collection. 7. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 8. Wynn used this evocative term when describing Jay Sarno’s design concepts. Steve Wynn, interviewed by Dave Schwartz, December 2006, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Oral History Collection. 9. Gregory A. Borchard and Anthony J. Ferri, “When in Las Vegas, Do As the Ancient Romans Did: Bread and Circuses Then and Now,” The Journal of Popular Culture 44, no. 4 (2011): 71. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00859.x. 10. Margaret Malamud, “As the Romans Did? Theming Ancient Rome in Contemporary LasVegas,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 6, no. 2 (1998): 14. 11. Michael Ian Borer, “Re-sensing Las Vegas: Aesthetic Entrepreneurship and Local Urban Culture,” Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 10, no. 1 (2017): 113. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2016.1139619.
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12. The term “culture industry” was coined and developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in 1947 in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment. See the chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” for a complete discussion of their theory related to popular culture and art (Horkheimer et al. 2002, pp. 94–136). 13. “T&A” is a colloquialism for “tits and ass.” Joel Bergman, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 14. Landscape designer Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs (the daughter of Donald Brinkerhoff, Wynn’s first landscape designer who worked The Mirage) describes the significance of the hotel’s exterior design and landscaping for creating an association of beauty with Las Vegas. She goes on to describe how Wynn funded a beautification project to keep the Las Vegas Strip visually appealing, green, and inviting. See Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, interviewed by Stefani Evans, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 15. The material testing to install Dale Chihuly’s Fiori Di Como in Bellagio’s lobby ceiling took over a year and cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wynn worked closely with the artist and Boeing scientists on the experiments to meet all safety and aesthetic standards. This episode in Bellagio’s construction is a fascinating look at how involved Wynn was in the design elements of his hotels (and at any cost), and is discussed in great detail by interior designer Roger Thomas. See Roger Thomas, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 16. Roger Thomas, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 17. Ibid. 18. Several of Wynn’s architects and designers discussed how he didn’t plan a budget for his construction projects in any conventional sense, instead aiming to produce a particular affect, outcome, or vision of what he wanted. As landscape architect Donald Brinkerhoff explained, this frustrated his accountants: “…the term I kept hearing is ‘It doesn’t pencil’…Steve’s made a good business out of doing things that don’t pencil and yet, in the end, they do pencil.” Donald Carl Brinkerhoff, interviewed by Stefani Evans, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 19. Tom Gorman, “Columnist Tom Gorman: Watching to See If Wynn Art Gallery Closes Shop,” Las Vegas Sun, October 21, 2005, https://dev.lasvegassun.com/news/2005/oct/21/columnist-tomgorman-watching-to-see-if-wynn-art-g/.
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20. As Bergman explained, Wynn provided room rates at a lower level than other places understanding that people wanted to feel special “Whether I come to Las Vegas with a hundred bucks or five thousand, I want to feel special. I want to be catered to…” Joel Bergman, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 21. For more discussion on episodes and controversies related to Wynn’s art collecting, tax loopholes, and his use of shareholder assets to fund the art acquisitions at Bellagio, see Smith, 339–342; and especially Binkley’s Chapter “Picasso’s Penis,” pp. 199–216. 22. Peter Schjeldahl, “An Archive of Eden” in Libby Lumpkin, Mirage Resorts Inc., and Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art (Las Vegas, NV). The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art: Impressionist and Modern Masters (Las Vegas, NV: Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Mirage Resorts, Inc., 1998), 13. 23. Jeffrey Valance, “The Greatest Art Show On Earth,” LA Weekly, April 21, 1999, https://www.laweekly.com/the-greatest-art-show-on-earth/. 24. Nicky Ryan, “Gambling on Contemporary Art in Vegas.” Art book 13, no. 3 (2006): 14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8357.2006.00688.x. 25. Michael Brenson, “The Curator’s Moment,” Art Journal 57, no. 4 (1960): 16. https://doi.org/10.2307/777925. 26. Libby Lumpkin, who ran the short-lived Las Vegas Museum of Art once leaving the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, witnessed and commented on the shift towards the interests of the private art collector in a show she curated with work almost exclusively from local private collectors (Wynn included): “The arrival of private collections is a healthy sign for any city wishing to see a change in its cultural climate. Despite the fact that artworks held by private individuals generally are not available for public viewing, the enthusiasm of collectors ultimately seeps into all the corners of civic life” (Ryan 2006). 27. Le Rêve was the painting that Wynn inadvertently punctured with his elbow in a notorious incident covered by the global press in 2006, bringing him even more publicity. See Paumgarten for a detailed account. 28. Roger Thomas, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 29. Ibid. 30. Another Wynn innovation, the move to constantly update and refresh the décor, interiors, restaurants, and entertainments in his hotels is a business practice that is now adopted across the hotel, cruise, and resort industry globally. Wynn’s thinking behind beautifying, updating, and refreshing his hotel design is discussed at some length in Jane Radoff, interviewed by Barbara Tabach, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project.
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31. As Roger Thomas recalled, “Chanel and Oscar de la Renta and Dior and Vuitton and Hermès, all of the owners of those companies were personal friends of the Wynns by that time. So they all wanted aboard. We talked in terms of, well, we don’t want to do anything that’s out there because that’s already existing and it’s got to be something someone’s never seen.” See Roger Thomas, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 32. Lee Cagley, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 33. By this point in Wynn’s career, it is important to note that Wynn is nearly blind, relying on his senses other than his vision. This may have also contributed to his gravitation towards embodied senses in his hotel designs. Wynn was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at an early age, a condition that leads to increased degeneration of vision over time. 34. DeRuyter O. Butler, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 35. Dorothea Von Hantelmann, “Why Koons?” In The Market: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Natasha Degen, 217–222 (London: Whitechapel Gallery; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 18. 36. Hal Foster, “The Medium is the Market,” London Review of Books 30, no. 19 (October 2008): 9, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n19/ hal-foster/the-medium-is-the-market. 37. Roger Thomas, interviewed by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, August 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 38. For a discussion of Wynn’s influence on proven concepts in Las Vegas resort design and its global influence, see Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, interviewed by Stefani Evans, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project; and Brad Friedmutter, interviewed by David Schwartz, September 2016, transcript, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. 39. Holland Cotter, “MoMA Reboots With ‘Modernism Plus’,” New York Times, October 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/ arts/design/moma-rehang-review-art.html. 40. Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 41. For a rich study on how the democratization of art has been understood historically, and especially as it relates to notions of everyday engagement by audiences and enhancing quality of life, see Booth (2014). At the core of this idea is the following: “The democratization of art is premised upon
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the idea that the more types of people engage with art… then art has been democratized and that this is, in and of itself, a good thing” (209). 42. Over the course of time researching and writing this chapter, Steve Wynn became embroiled in several legal battles stemming from dozens of sexual misconduct allegations made against him in early 2018. He resigned as chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts the same year and sold his entire stake in the company soon thereafter. The fate of his art collection remains shrouded in mystery as the details of his divorce settlement with former wife, Elaine Wynn, are not entirely clear. At the time of this writing, media reports detail Wynn’s efforts to quietly sell off significant parts of his collection.
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