Dueling modernist shows bring art world together on the Strip

Monday, Feb. 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

You couldn’t have asked for a better coincidence — two big art galleries on the Strip are showing very distinct modernist exhibits.

In the Venetian, “Modern Masters from the Guggenheim” covers a gamut of European modernists — Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, van Gogh, Braque, Chagall and Klee to name a few. It even throws in a Manet and Cezanne to emphasize the modernist lineage.

Down the street at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art we’ve got America’s answer to these artists.

It’s as if the Strip is the Atlantic Ocean and we’ve been transported to a historic event in art history.

All we need now is an educational exhibit showing photos of the landmark 1913 New York Armory show, the juggernaut that changed the way Americans looked at art and for the first time elevated New York’s position in the art world.

The 18 artists featured in “American Modernism” at the Bellagio gallery took the cubist, dadaist, surrealist and expressionist styles of their European counterparts and made them their own, giving the world modernist American landscapes, industrial snapshots, nature motifs and New York skyscrapers.

The exhibit shows a Hans Hofmann still life, “Green Bottle” (1921), Charles Sheeler’s industrial look, clean lines and flat colors of “Ore Into Iron” (1953), Max Weber’s dark and industrial, cubist/futurist-style “New York (The Liberty Tower from the Singer Building)” (1912), Niles Spencer’s 1940 harbor scene, “Near New London,” and Stuart Davis’s New England scenes — “Gloucester Street” (1916) and “Hillside Near Gloucester” (1915). We even get a glimpse of Davis’s later abstract efforts with “Egg Beater #3” (1927-28).

All of the works were painted between 1908 and 1953. These artists traveled in the same circles, studied and favored some of the same European counterparts and predecessors. Some of the artists were even featured in the 1913 Armory Show.

The exhibit is heavy with O’Keeffe’s stark abstract paintings of the Southwest (seven are in the show), including “Grey Wash Forms” (1936) and “Deer’s Skull with Pedernal” (1936). There are two works by Maine-born Marsden Hartley, four works by Davis and four by the Russian-born Weber, who is noted as one of the first American painters to transform European modernism.

Though small — 34 works — the exhibit offers a solid snapshot of early modernist America, including works by lesser known painters.

To put it in a broader scope, walk across the street afterward. “Modern Masters from the Guggenheim” is on display through April.

The only artist you’ll see in both shows: Arshile Gorky.