Opening Aria II: Food & Art

In sorting through how to present the many images from the opening of Aria last week, I found a strong emphasis in my photography on food and art/artistic visuals. The above, for instance, was the display that greeted Aria opening night VIP party guests. Here's the label...


...and here's another image of same.


There was a lot of food that I do not eat, namely foie gras and any meat or fishy thing that's uncooked. That's why I was so excited to find at the Union Bar off from the casino they were doing sliders. Very delicious sliders. Sliders that I simply assumed were some special cut of beef. Until I stepped into the light and realized that these sliders were...


...veal. Which I do not eat. Not because I don't like the taste -- which is why I have the heebie jeebies about uncooked meat and fish -- but for the same reason that I don't eat foie gras. That is, both are foods that cannot be made without being incredibly cruel to animals for their entire short lives. It is true that I eat beef, pork, chicken and other meat that comes, frequently, from factory farms where the animals live painful and tormented lives. This is an ongoing problem for my conscience and I'm still working on how to address it, having found that I couldn't afford free-range meat on a regular basis when I tried a year ago. But there is no way to produce foie gras without force feeding a duck and no way to produce veal without permanently deprieving a calf of mobility.

So that was unfortunate. There was still plenty of yum abounding:





OK, that -- Jean Phillippe Patisserie The Sequel -- wasn't open. But it still looked delicious.

The one thing that I baffled over was actually not at the party at all but in the media center that occupied a ballroom at Vdara. I'd never had one of these...

...and had to ask people on Twitter how to eat it. (Answer: Cut in half, spoon out.)

OK, so the art. I don't think I fully understood even when I broke the story of the $40 million art program in the New York Times in early 2008 just how significant it would be. You've seen pictures everywhere of "Silver River" by Maya Lin (see my Sphere.Com profile of her from last week, too) and I've posted shots of the Nancy Rubins boat sculpture, the giant typewriter eraser, the Frank Stella at Vdara registration, the wonderful Vdara elevator area installations of stacked paper by Peter Wegner and the Henry Moore in Jim Murren's notorious pocket park.

Well, a few more now. These mammoth installations on the lobbies of Veer by Richard Long are really cool...


...as is this one hanging in Aria that is, sadly and weirdly, not listed in the CityCenter Fine Art Collection brochure that is intended as a self-guide:


It was also exciting, on a tour on Tuesday with curator Michele Quinn, to find out that they ended up picking up this...


...Tim Bavington for the high-limit slot area. That's cool because Bavington is actually a local, a British artist who came to UNLV to study with Dave Hickey and has seen his career flourish in the cradle of Vegas. His work has some relationship to radio frequencies and can be found in many prominent places in Vegas including in the dining room of Spago at Caesars Palace.

The piece below, which hangs over the cactus garden outside the entrances to Sirio, American Fish and Jean Georges Steakhouse, is by far my least favorite piece:


It's not in the brochure, of course, so I don't know who did it but it is part of the collection. To me, it is more design than art. Sorta tacky, really.

They don't view this as art, but the Lumia, the fountain out front of Aria, certainly ought to qualify. Not only does the interplay of color and water rivet...


...but how about what it looks like reflected under the nearby glass and steel overhangs:


WET, the folks behind the Lake of Dreams and the Bellagio Fountains, have five features, three at Aria and two at Crystals. This massive and lengthy one...


...at the Aria valet drive is just very pretty and really frames the mugshot of the hotel itself beautifully.

This one, though, was a dud.


That's Glacia at the Crystals. It's basically just columns of ice that form and melt. Zzzz. When we were first told about this, the PR folks made it sound like they would freeze and melt in midair or right before you. But, no, it takes all day. Nothing actually HAPPENS. And since they're encouraging people to touch it, I can't wait until it's 115 degrees outside and some drunk guy tries to climb one of the pillars or eat it or something.

Two more things. I know Hunter Hillegas of RateVegas.Com is sticking to his opinion that these card-sculpture walls in the Aria poker room are ugly...


...but I still think they're pretty and fun and whimsical.

And when I took my CityCenter tours in November for my stories, the PR folks didn't really know if all this exposed piping at this shop in Aria was intentional or whether it was just mid-construction.


Now that it's done, I have to say that this is a one of the coolest looking stores I've ever seen anywhere. I don't even know what they sell. I just love looking at it.