After the bustling crowds, the fake facades, and the expansive neon of most of the Strip, finding a small oasis of fine art in Las Vegas perked up my senses. I lingered with current exhibition of landscapes at the Bellagio's Gallery of Fine Art which cost $15 for a short viewing.
The main courtyard of the Bellagio houses an indoor botanical garden that crawled with kids and strollers and cellphone cameras. As always, people are drawn to color and flowers and good design. There's a walk through two lines of birch trees that are outlined with orange and yellow Icelandic poppies. A Ferris wheel and merry-go-round (decorative only) and a butterfly house are set amid swirls of tulips, hyacinths, foxglove, ivy, calendulas, and chrysanthemums.
Over in a corner of the botanical garden is this large artist's easel with a version of David Hockney's Yorkshire landscape, Garrowby Hill. The original, dated 1998, is on loan to the Bellagio Gallery from The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is the painting that you see on the billboards around Las Vegas that advertise the Bellagio's current show, "A Sense of Place: Landscapes from Monet to Hockney."
No photographs were allowed in the Gallery, but you can snap away in the botanical garden. I loved the easel setting and the big paintbrush that accompanies this floral interpretation of Garrowby Hill.
Cellphone photo (of course!)
Copyright 2011
Wanda Hayes Eichler
No comments:
Post a Comment