Paint Saint

Kimberley McGee

Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 | 8:47 a.m.

What: Marc Chagall Exhibit.

When: Today through Nov. 14.

Where: Las Vegas Art Museum, 9600 W. Sahara Ave.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays; Closed Mondays.

Cost: $5.

Information: Call 360-8000.

At first mention the Las Vegas Art Museum may sound like an oxymoron.

Las Vegas? Art? Museum? The words are picked over carefully as if they were heard wrong, somehow. Then the obvious barbs are usually bandied about, such as "'What do they showcase, cocktail napkins?"

Well, the LVAM isn't laughing. It is serious about culture in Las Vegas, (yes, culture), and is introducing a rare exhibit of paintings by Marc Chagall to the seemingly anemic canvas of art in this city.

"The Chagall show will obviously make people aware the museum is there because he's like having the Beatles play at Caesars Palace," says Carter Tutwiler, a California art dealer who played the middle man in getting this one-of-a-kind art show to Las Vegas. "There's been a bit of a cultural void there, probably, up until now."

Now more than 40 oil-on-canvas paintings and 20 prints by Chagall from 1957 through the early 1980s will grace the white walls of the modern museum on West Sahara Avenue today through Nov. 14.

This will be the only opportunity for the public to see this private collection from Chagall's estate, courtesy of art collector David Rogath of Connecticut.

Admission is $5, up from the usual $3 ticket price due to the enormous amount of insurance needed for the priceless paintings and the cost to ship the art pieces -- some as tall as 3 feet and others a dainty 10 inches -- with values cresting at $1.5 million for the painting "L'ecuyere a la jupe a carreauz."

The art world considers Chagall to be one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of this century. His paintings are inspired by Russian expressionism and French cubism, with a distinctive use of color and form. Born in Russia in 1887, Chagall spent most of his life in France.

"Chagall can be called the most influential artist on young artists today," James Mann, LVAM curator since its opening in February 1997, says. "The illogic of (Chagall's) way of making pictures inspired the movement we know as surrealism that began in Paris in 1924."

Chagall illustrated the 12 stained-glass windows in the Hadassah Hospital of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem (1962), the canvas of the ceiling of the Opera in Paris (1964) and two large murals which hang in New York City's Metropolitan Opera House lobby. Chagall died in St. Paul de Vence, France, on March 28, 1985.

"Las Vegas is one of the richest cities in the U.S., probably, but it's kind of also a laughing stock in a way because people just think it's a lot of glitter and gambling," Tutwiler says. "(But) there's a lot of other things going on in Las Vegas, I think. I'd like to think maybe now there will be."

But will they come?

"After two and a half years it is still hard to define the size of the serious visual arts audience that we have here," Mann says, adding, "If this doesn't bring them in, nothing will."

Although the museum would like to be a tourist attraction as well as respected in its own community, it's pining more for the love of the locals who care about art. But maybe they haven't had the chance, or the gumption, to come in and walk its cool tiled floors and gaze at the softly-lit art on its tall white walls.

"We don't judge our effectiveness by the number of people who show up because the ones who do come are the ones who really care," Mann says. "What's important is the overall cultural good that one does for the community and the culture and the civilization."

Without the insistence of board member, David Carver, president of Stanpark Homes, and a few art connections in Los Angeles, the paintings would still be in their crates back east.

"Carver was bent on giving back to the city that has basically helped him become successful," Tutwiler says.

Carver convinced him that Las Vegas was ripe for the art world to serve up juicy exhibits. "People are culturally hungry there -- why not give them something to sink their teeth into?" Tutwiler says.

And they want the whole world to feast its eyes on the many-splendored facets of Las Vegas' mushrooming arts community.

"(Carver) asked if I had any suggestions that could bolster the museum's stature amongst other museums in the country," Tutwiler says. "And with all of the press Steve Wynn had generated for Las Vegas in regards to the big name artists, (Carver) figured the time was right to start showcasing the museum as well."

Tutwiler is good friends with Rogath, who has one of the largest collections of Chagall art in the world. When Rogath gave the green light, LVAM, excited and grateful, bent over backwards to get the exhibit set, giving it something that bigger cultural cities such as New York and Los Angeles didn't have.

"If anything, the appreciation that Las Vegas is showing for this event is another good reason to have done it," Tutwiler says. "Why not go somewhere where they are going to be receptive, make it easy, make it fun?"

Plans are rolling in for other artists' displays, inspired by Chagall's appearance at the LVAM.

"This will bring prominent artists from across the country to Las Vegas," Tutwiler says. "They may not have considered it before but they will consider it now. They'll take it a little more seriously. I think they are beginning to."

Even though Steve Wynn is using art as a marquee value on the Strip at his gallery at the Bellagio, Tutwiler says, people are attracted to art as an event.

A museum makes its name, he says, with post-modern works and that is what is scheduled as a follow-up to Chagall. Tutwiler was asked to bring another artist in to continue community interest in the museum. New York painter/ sculptor Deborah Passwater, who has made a name for herself on both coasts, will set up in the museum after the Chagall exhibit.

"Chagall makes artists like Passwater want to go to Las Vegas," Tutwiler says. "It's important for people to be subjected to and have different kinds of art available to them. It's more than the big name, it's about different people who are talented, expressing themselves."

Bruce Hochman, the director of the Salvador Dali Gallery in Pacific Palisades, Calif., noticed Las Vegas art capabilities when the LVAM displayed "Vision of Hell," a lone original painting by the controversial and eccentric Dali.

"Because of their getting the one (Dali) piece and getting so much interest in Dali, we decided it was a very good venue," Hochman says.

A Dali show, "Dali's Millennium," with roughly 300 pieces, is scheduled for March 1-April 30 at LVAM.

The last time Hochman did a show of this size and caliber was at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 1992, for three days only. More than 4,500 people lined up to take in Dali's paintings.

Currently, "Vision of Hell," painted by Dali in 1962, and his "Luna ala calanque de culip," painted in 1918, are on display at the LVAM and have created a ripple of interest from the art world.

"We donated a ('Luna ala calanque de culip'), painted when Dali was 14 years old, and they started getting more interested. People were coming up to see two Dalis and they said 'Anything else?' and that's when we decided to do a show and fill the walls with Dali," Hochman says.

The LVAM expects the Dali show to once again take the temperature of the city's fledgling art scene.

"The Dali show should tell us what size is out there because he is so well known," Mann says. "People will come."