On Saturday, Sotheby’s plans to auction 11 works by the Spanish master owned by gaming giant MGM Resorts International in a ballroom at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino.
Sotheby’s estimates their total value at around $ 70 million.
Since this is Vegas, the auction house plans to produce a lot more pizazz than bidders expect from a silent New York affair. Sotheby’s is turning a ballroom just a few steps from a sea of slot machines into an auction room. But before anyone picks up the hammer, former talk show host Jay Leno will talk about his huge car collection. After the sale, Pablo Picasso’s great-grandson, DJ Florian Picasso, will play tunes at a party with cabaret dancers.
“We learned over the past year that people are adaptable but love surprises,” said Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s chairwoman and global director of global art sales.
To attract the interest of big players who might otherwise not be able to participate in art auctions, Sotheby’s and MGM held a second sale at the nearby ARIA Resort & Casino on Sunday. Items include a pair of Nikes worn by basketball great Michael Jordan during his rookie year in 1984, with an estimated presale value of at least $ 1 million) and a manuscript of Bruce Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics for Born to Run ( estimated value $ 200,000 or more).
The Las Vegas Strip has an ever-changing relationship with the visual arts. When the Bellagio opened in 1998, its art gallery of the same name featured masters such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and played a role in the hit remake of Ocean’s Eleven, which centered on thieves ambushing an art-loving casino mogul.
The Venetian Resort opened its own museum with works from the collections of the New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. It was closed in 2008.
More recently, Station Casinos brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta planned to include a Damien Hirst aquarium-style aquarium with a dissected shark in their renovation plans for the Palms Casino Resort before the casino closed. The casino was sold to the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians this spring.
MGM says it plans to use Sotheby’s sales to commission installations like this mural by contemporary artist Okuda San Miguel.
Photo:
Joe Buglewicz for the Wall Street Journal
The Bellagio, which is owned by MGM Resorts International, still has its fine arts gallery, which will continue to organize exhibitions, says Demecina Beehn, curator of special projects at MGM. The gallery has an average of around 150 visitors a day, she says. The Picasso auction takes place in the casino’s Monet ballroom.
The Picasso works on sale this weekend have long adorned the Picasso-themed restaurant at the Bellagio, which offers itself as “fine dining, authentic Picasso masterpieces and a view of the Bellagio fountains”. The restaurant replaced the works it sold with other, lesser-known Picassos from its collection, Ms. Beehn said.
Works up for auction include a 1938 portrait of the artist’s lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, entitled “Woman in a Red and Orange Beret,” which Sotheby’s says will sell for at least $ 20 million.
There is also a 6-foot portrait from 1969 titled “Man and Child,” which is said to raise at least $ 20 million, along with a jewel-colored “Bust of a Man” from the same year that is worth $ 20 million should have at least $ 10 million. Other smaller pieces in the set include an estimated $ 60,000 ceramic vase engraved with the artist’s cheerful markings and a 1917 drawing “Pierrot” that Sotheby’s is estimated to sell for at least $ 2.5 million will sell.
Pablo Picasso’s 6-foot Man and Child from 1969 is part of the MGM collection up for auction in Las Vegas this weekend.
Photo:
Sotheby’s
MGM officials say the sale of the Picassos in Las Vegas will help the casino operator build its reputation in contemporary art. MGM says it can make the space and money to expand its contemporary art collection, which currently includes around 900 pieces, many of which are on display in the casino operator’s worldwide properties.
To make for a “seamless, consistent experience,” Ms. Lampley of Sotheby’s said the house is building a Sotheby’s set in the ballroom with teal walls and telephone banks and a white pedestal. The auction house is flying in its London star auctioneer Oliver Barker to hold the sale in the Bellagio’s Monet ballroom. It also hires a cellist to perform on the nearby terrace.
The sale will be streamed live and will begin at 6 p.m. local time, so it coincides with 9 a.m. in Asia, Ms. Lampley said. California and Texas collectors seem more willing to participate in the auction, she said, and the 80 ballroom seats are already taken. Great Picasso dealer David Nahmad said he was sending his sons Joe and Helly Nahmad up for sale.
The eleven Picassos up for tender were originally selected by Bellagio founder Steve Wynn, the casino magnate and great art collector who was ostracized from the industry after he denied allegations of sexual misconduct three years ago Has. Mr. Wynn, 79 years old, stepped down as Head of Wynn Resorts in 2018. Mr. Wynn, reached through his Wynn Fine Art gallery, declined to comment on the upcoming sale.
Picasso’s “Bust of a Man” from 1969 will be auctioned this weekend in Las Vegas.
Photo:
Sotheby’s
Ari Kastrati, MGM’s chief hospitality officer, said MGM had “evolved” and intended to use an undisclosed portion of the proceeds to purchase additional works by women and emerging color artists.
Mr Kastrati said he also hopes the sale can boost Sin City’s drive to become a visual arts destination. Plans to build a $ 200 million art museum that could serve as a subsidiary of Renos Nevada Museum of Art have been put on hold amid the pandemic, museum director David Walker said.
In 2016, the locals were also reluctant to accept the installation “Seven Magic Mountains” by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone south of Las Vegas with its totem-like towers made of brightly painted boulders – although it now attracts hundreds of visitors every day.
For Michele Quinn, a lifelong Las Vegas resident and former MGM curator who advised collectors such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the upcoming auction is “bittersweet” as the Bellagio Picassos were one of the few great masterpieces the locals had could see close home. Selling them, she says, feels like “a liquidation or the end of an era”.
The “Seven Magic Mountains” of Ugo Rondinone, a few kilometers south of the Las Vegas Strip, attract several hundred visitors every day.
Photo:
Gianfranco Gorgoni / Art Production Fund / Nevada Museum of Art
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com
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