Vatican of the 90's?
The Renaissance Stops in for a Drink and a Show at Las VegasRecently over 500 SiteGuides from About descended upon Las Vegas to attend the Red Ball, the "Internet's Global Block Party." They also had the opportunity to gamble a few chips and visit several new casino resorts, whose lavish decorations, faux marble, and vivid frescoes would make a doge blush.
Just Put It on The Ceiling and Call It High Art
When it opened in 1997 the New York New York casino - which is themed from the top of its one-third-size Chrysler Building to the tips of the distressed fake-copper toes of its Statue of Liberty - set a benchmark for authenticity, but it was soon upstaged by the Euro-style competition: the Bellagio, the Paris, and the Venetian.
The ceilings of the basilica-size hallways of the Venetian casino are fashioned after Tiepolo and Veronese (and include a reproduction of the Triumph of Venice). What the works lack in depth and texture they make up in pure chutzpah. The resort also boasts a faux St. Mark's Square, gondolier-filled canals, and a perfect replica of the Palazzo Ducale, which was fashioned with acrylic "marble" cast foam molding on the balconies. In all, over $100 million was spent on items like the marble lobby floor in the Galleria and the painted canvas trompe l'oeil ceiling.
Not far from the Venetian is another simulacrum of classic Italy, the Bellagio, which was inspired by the eponymous village that overlooks Lake Como and features the gardens and red tiled roofs of a lakeside Italian villa. The resort boasts a Gallery of Fine Arts containing original first-rate paintings by such masters as Picasso, de Kooning, Cézanne, and Degas.
The fake Italian resort has taken a page from the Villa d'Este (a sixteenth-century villa just outside Rome whose terraced gardens include five hundred fountains and attract tourists from all over the world) by constructing a 9-acre man-made lake with a $30 million computer-generated water and fountain show accompanied by lights and music. Although most of the architectural work is imitative rather than innovative, there is a at least one notable exception, the glorious glass sculpture"Fiori di Como" in the lobby, which resembles hundreds of multicolored sea anemones clinging to the ceiling.
Art of Compromise
The casino owners here are America's new Medici, proud patrons of the flowering of a modern variant on old ornamental crafts. In the new casinos, noble materials are used in just a few places. The balconies and gates inside the Paris shopping mall are wrought iron. But for the most part the decorative effects are achieved using materials that are light, cheap, and synthetic. The fake statuary on the façade of the Paris casino complex consists of more than 10,000 pieces for the "landmarks" carved from Styrofoam or cast in molds. And, the demi-size Eiffel Tower looms over the strip, a scenographic mirage in a desert of dreams.
Photos: © 1999 Michael P. San Filippo licensed to About.com, Inc.
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