Las Vegas does not have a proper art museum, yet it has an amazing collection of world class art. Most of these works are held in private collections. If you are an art enthusiast living in the valley you grow accustomed to seeking out art work in unsuspecting places. One such place is the Palms Casino Resort. The resort is home to more than 60 contemporary masterworks scattered throughout the hotel. Finding the work feels a bit like an Easter egg hunt — a Banksy in a restaurant, a Warhol in the corner of the lobby. The piece shown here by Damien Hirst sits above a bar surrounded by a series of paintings from his “pharmaceutical” series.
It is an interesting experience to order a cocktail, with a sporting event on the flat screen, slot machines clanging in the distance, while pondering a work that explores death in a space that celebrates our propensity to self-medicate. The setting, although unorthodox, allows one to spend several hours next to masterworks in a non-threatening, unpretentious environment.
The current owners of the Palms, at a minimum, have a mild obsession with Hirst and his work. He has numerous works scattered throughout the resort including an enormous 60-foot-tall bronze sculpture entitled Demon with Bowl (2014) that dominates the pool area. Hirst was also commissioned to outfit a custom two-story penthouse suite that rents on the weekends for more than $100,000 per night. Hirst is reportedly the wealthiest living artist in the UK and one of the most controversial. Since 1999 he has been accused of plagiarism. One legal dispute involved his work entitled Hymn, based on a child’s toy, which was settled out of court. It is interesting to note that the objects or subjects in his works are found rather than original.
The use of found objects in artwork can be traced back to the Dada Movement and Nihilism. Why would one spend the time and effort developing something original if everything is meaningless? Hirst’s appropriation is an essential component of the work itself.
The piece shown here, entitled Unknown (Explored, Explained, Exploded), takes a 13-foot shark, slices it in three pieces and suspends those pieces in glass tanks filled with a formaldehyde solution. Between the tanks one catches glimpses of the shark’s interior organs. When I first experienced this work the 7- foot-tall tanks stood on the floor, and the space between the tanks was wide enough to walk through. The experience was dramatic and powerful. The most compelling aspect of the work is its stillness. Taking an animal that requires constant motion to survive in the wilderness and immobilizing its dissected parts in a light blue liquid proves to be, simultaneously, visually beautiful and intellectually intriguing. It taps into our childlike curiosity, our desire to understand the wilderness. Like so many of our quests to obtain knowledge, this work required the sacrifice and unnatural presentation of a creature that at one point was alive.