Silver River

Next up is Silver River, an 87' rendition of the route of the Colorado River in cast silver, created by Maya Lin in 2009 for the Aria hotel/casino in Las Vegas. I was going to chalk this up as another only-in-Vegas thing, but it's actually part of a wider series of cast-silver rivers, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Hudson, and Housatonic.

glacia

A few photos of the funky "Glacia" ice feature at the Crystals mall in Vegas, which I took while wandering through and not buying anything. A CityCenter press release describes it:

At the entrance, Glacia “cools” guests with large pillars of carved ice that rise as tall as 15 feet. And “rise” is the operative word, as these columns emerge silently from a pristine pool, ascending slowly upward as immense monoliths of frozen water. As each ice monument rises, it is carved at water level into intricate, three-dimensional patterns. Colored lighting combines with the varied ice clarities --sometimes crystal clear, sometimes frosty white-- to produce a visual experience that never repeats itself. Grammy winner Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead is creating a “tonal poem” to accompany this visual surprise.

WET Design describes it in similar terms:

WET's cutting-edge creations help to reveal a world of fascination and wonder at every turn at CityCenter in Las Vegas. The water designs play an integral role in producing an immediate feeling of elegance and surprise throughout the grounds. Crystals, the stunning retail and entertainment district, designed by architects Studio Daniel Libeskind and Rockwell Group, houses Glacia and Halo, two cutting-edge features that exist in pure harmony with one another. Glacia "cools" guests with large pillars of carved ice that rise as tall as 15 feet. As each ice monument rises, it is magically whittled into intricate, three dimensional patterns. Mesmerizing hues bathe this poised feature in spectral light to produce a one-of-a-kind sensory experience. Grammy winner Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead is creating a "tonal poem" to accompany this visual surprise.

halo

A short video clip of the "Halo" water feature inside the Crystals mall in Las Vegas. A CityCenter press release describes it thusly:

Halo materializes as a series of water vortices held captive within clear cylinders that thrust up through the floor. Sloped, as though about to fall, the swirling water appears caught in constant struggle to right itself with its inherent sense of verticality. These swirls of color serve as a main focal point of the atrium. In between stops at Louis Vuitton and Gucci, guests and visitors are free to walk through and touch or embrace this maze of spinning water while staying completely dry. WET’s elemental features at CityCenter set the spirit for the sophisticated experience that visitors to this unprecedented destination will enjoy.

WET Design, the firm behind all of the CityCenter water widgets, has this to say about it:

WET's cutting-edge creations help to reveal a world of fascination and wonder at every turn at CityCenter in Las Vegas. The water designs play an integral role in producing an immediate feeling of elegance and surprise throughout the grounds. Crystals, the stunning retail and entertainment district, designed by architects Studio Daniel Libeskind and Rockwell Group, houses Glacia and Halo, two cutting-edge features that exist in pure harmony with one another. The unexpected nature of Halo's twisting water vortices, tipped as though about to fall, enlivens Crystals' shopping experience and presents a sense of mystique for guests wandering among the lavish shops. Visitors are free to stroll through, touching or embracing this maze of spinning water, all the while staying completely dry.

Bolt / Bent of Mind / Untitled (Tall Column)

Turns out I had another Vegas art post sitting around in the drafts folder. This, or rather these, are "Bolt", "Bent of Mind", and "Untitled (Tall Column)", by the British sculptor Tony Cragg, located at one entrance to the Aria hotel. I'm not really sure which of them is which though, as they're all variations on the same theme and I neglected to check the signage. I may have had a daiquiri or two prior to coming across them, and even without daiquiris one can only stop so many times in a row and go "OOOhhh" and start snapping photos before (justified) spousal annoyance becomes a limiting factor.



This is supposed to be a photo of "Bent of Mind". Although there's apparently a second, larger "Bent of Mind" in Grand Rapids, MI, made of bronze rather than stainless steel. An about.com page about CityCenter art mentions all three but doesn't really help with the whole which-is-which thing.



Anyway, here are some photos from a 2007 NYC gallery show of his works, plus the New York Times review of that show. The NYT article mentions a Brancusi influence to the pieces in the show, which are generally in the same style as the ones at the Aria. I can see the resemblance, or I think I do, but then I generally like Brancusi's work as well. Wait, are we still talking about Vegas here?

Reclining Connected Forms

The occasional tour of Vegas highbrow art continues, with a visit to Reclining Connected Forms (1969-1974), by the English sculptor Henry Moore. Like Typewriter Eraser Scale X and Big Edge, it's part of the $40 million art collection at the $10 billion CityCenter complex, and can be found tucked away between the swanky Crystals mall and the alarming Veer condo towers.

As a headline art attraction at a shiny new casino, there are more than a few mentions of it on the net, so I'll just pass a few along that seemed interesting. An About.com piece about it includes a photo of it in a gallery, prior to its arrival in Vegas, and it's mentioned in a funny article about CityCenter art at VegasMavens. And a cardboard spoof version of it appeared in a recent show titled CountyCenter.

The date given above spans the years 1969-1974 because this is just one in a series, and it has siblings of various sizes & materials scattered across the globe. Sightings of various siblings I've come across on the interwebs:

• Smaller bronze predecessor at Adelaide University in Australia.
• In Kansas City at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
• Storm King Art Center in upstate New York
• The Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale
• Kew Gardens in London
• Trinity College, Dublin
• On the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation itself.
• One was sold at auction by Sothebys earlier this year. I didn't create an account to see exactly how much it sold for, but the page says the pre-auction estimate was around £1.5M to £2.5M, and says it's number 5 of 9 copies produced.
• A much smaller maquette for Reclining Connected Forms, 1969 sold in 2010, with an estimated price of £35k-£45k.
  
• In 2006, a bronze version was removed from display at Exeter University (UK) due to fears about metal thieves, and returned to the Henry Moore foundation. So it might be the same one mentioned above, or possibly the foundation has multiple copies and one's the designated loaner.

Typewriter Eraser, Scale X

A few photos of Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (official website). This piece is located outside of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at CityCenter, Las Vegas.

Oldenburg & van Bruggen are famous for their sculptures of everyday objects scaled up to enormous size, including a giant cherry & spoon in Minneapolis, a giant clothespin in Philadelphia, a giant safety pin in San Francisco, another giant safety pin in New Orleans, and several giant typewriter erasers. There are at least two others on public display besides this one: One at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and another in Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Garden.



Elsewhere on the net, I came across a PBS video about the piece, and restoration photos of the Vegas copy.

One -- it's not clear whether it was the Vegas copy or yet another one -- sold at a 2009 Christie's auction for a cool $2,210,500. For comparison, you can buy a much smaller -- but functional -- vintage typewriter eraser online for just $5, and Amazon has new ones for about $2.

And while you're busy buying retro technology, it turns out that you can still buy a shiny new typewriter to go along with your eraser. A recent Daily Mail story claimed that the world's last typewriter factory had closed, but it turns out that it wasn't really the last typewriter factory. In fact New Jersey-based Swintec has a range of models available in the $150-$900 range, including clear ones for use in prisons (so inmates can't hide contraband inside). Amazingly, they also offer a classic 80s-style word processor, complete with 15" monochrome monitor and floppy drive, for a mere $1,678. The info page for it points out that it can't be used to access the internet or play games. Assuming these machines aren't just unsold inventory from 1989, there must still be a niche market out there for dedicated word processors. I can only speculate what that niche might be. My guess would be curmudgeonly mystery writers who've used this exact word processor since 1982 and absolutely refuse to move with the times, to the eternal dismay of their long-suffering agents and publishers.



In any case, I generally like Oldenburg's work, but I see a couple of problems with this piece, neither of which are/were under the artists' control:

1. The whole concept behind Oldenburg sculptures is that they're ginormous oversized versions of everyday objects. If the giant typewriter eraser is itself dwarfed by ginormous oversized skyscrapers all around it, it just doesn't have the same impact.
   
   
2. The other problem is that a typewriter eraser is no longer an everyday object. How many people in 2011 know what the hell a typewriter eraser even is, or what size it's supposed to be? As far as I can recall I've never used one, although I may have seen a real one once or twice. Actually I don't think I've used a typewriter at all since my freshman year in high school, which was about 25 years ago. Oh, and while I'm telling you how incredibly old I am, did I mention that our school had manual typewriters? And they replaced them with shiny new Macintosh Plus computers the year after I had typing class? It's true.

So it's not a huge surprise that it's already been spoofed (along with the other works scattered around CityCenter), in a recent show at the county government center titled CountyCenter (more photos here).

"Backspace Key, Scale X". Heh.

Focus Fountain

Here's another of the swanky new fountains at CityCenter in Las Vegas. A press release about CityCenter fountains describes it:

Along the outer entrance circle rises Focus, an expansive, 270-foot-long curved water wall made of highly textured stone. Focus emphasizes the ever-changing, choreographed patterns that effortlessly sweep across the immense length and height of the wall. The all-enveloping water flow creates an ocean-like timbre that calms the area leading to ARIA’s lobby.

The water also cools the air outside the entrance, which is nice if you're standing outside in the 115 degree sun waiting for a taxi. So it's, I hesitate to use the word practical because this is Las Vegas, and we're talking about a huge water feature in the middle of the Mojave Desert, located at the entrance to a ten billion dollar casino complex with its own monorail system. So I think utilitarian is probably out too. Functional? Is that a better word? Is there a better word?

It's still nice on a hot day, whatever you want to call it.

Big Edge

More art from CityCenter in Las Vegas. This is "Big Edge", by Nancy Rubins, in the traffic circle between the Aria & Vdara hotels. It's huge and made of canoes; you can't miss it.

So why all the canoes, here, in the middle of the desert? An LA Times profile of the artist explains what's going on here. (It's complicated.) And from across the interwebs, here are photos of other similar works, in La Jolla, CA and a temporary one at Lincoln Center in New York, and various others.

The Seven Continents

A few photos of The Seven Continents, in front of the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas. It's by well-known designer Karim Rashid, who also designed the adjacent Silk Road restaurant.

The restaurant (and the Vdara as a whole, really) are in kind of an obscure location that doesn't get a lot of foot traffic, and sadly it's going to be closing in early March. You would say "sadly" too if you'd ever tried their so-called "breakfast sliders", especially the one with the steak & quail egg on top. I had a dream about that one recently. I'm not kidding.

This is apropos because The Seven Continents is not included in the official CityCenter Fine Art Collection brochure [pdf] or any of the other PR about all the expensive art they've installed around the area. I don't know if this was an oversight, or it was installed too late to be included, or simply that it's considered part of the restaurant decor and not a standalone artwork. There's a very broad definition of "art" that claims art is whatever artists do. By that definition I suppose design is whatever designers do, therefore this counts as design and not art. So maybe when the restaurant goes, it goes too. I mean, it's Las Vegas, even that fine art brochure never uses the word "permanent" anywhere. I'll have to check next time we're in the area & see if it's still there. Although that may lead to another round of dreams about quail eggs.

Crystals, Las Vegas

Here we've got a few vacation photos of "The Crystals", the luxury shopping mall in the vast $11B CityCenter complex in Las Vegas. Except for the store logos out front, it's not at all obvious that it's a mall. If you have a ten figure pile of dollars to burn on a casino complex, and you'd like your casino complex to be a funhouse of unusual angles and striking shapes, one of the first things you do is hire a small army of famous architects to do your buildings. The retail segment went to Studio Daniel Liebeskind, best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the master plan for the Ground Zero site in Manhattan. So doing a shopping center must have been quite a change of pace.

We weren't in the market for luxury goods at the time (which is pretty much always the case, come to think of it), so we didn't go inside. Although apparently there are a couple of unusual water features inside, so I wouldn't mind taking a look at them (by which I mean taking a few too many photos of them), next time we're in the area.

Lumia Fountain at the Aria

So-so camera phone video of the Lumia fountain in front of the shiny new Aria casino in Las Vegas. It's a fun piece of engineering wizardry, although you'll need to watch a better video to get the full effect. I recommend this one.