Steve Martin's Private Art Collection

Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, Las Vegas

The first thing you see is two Conté crayon drawings by Seurat, which reveal his assimilation of Vermeer, and a suspension of form akin to Cézanne.
Edward Hopper's Captain Upton's House (1927) is a root of Diebenkorn, and his Hotel Window (1955) is Nighthawks looking out.

Lichtenstein's Ohhh… Alright… (1964) is a classically perfect statement of Mondrian. Stanton MacDonald-Wright's Synchromy, Cubist Head (c. 1916) is a gradation of tones, and De Kooning's pastel Two Women (c. 1952) is a syntactical experiment. Bacon's Study for Portrait (1966) is a résumé of Kandinsky, as Charles Demuth's pencil and watercolor In Vaudeville: Soldier and Girl Friend (1915) is an homage to the Nabis.
Picasso's Seated Woman (1938) is a Queen of Diamonds, and a pencil Nude (1919) is dislocations of form.
Two paintings by Eric Fischl, Truman Capote in Hollywood (1988) and Barbeque (1982) are an homage to the great artist and displacements of color, respectively. Martin's recorded comments on his portrait by Fischl are very amusing. David Park's Two Women (1957) is a study in light effects. Steve Martin's first purchase (at the age of 21), James Gale Tyler's Ship at Sea, is a great little Post-Impressionist oil, still worth, as Martin explains, with inflation, the $750 he paid for it. While you are visiting the Bellagio, examine the two large vegetable dye transfers on polylaminate by Rauschenberg behind the registration desk. Lucky Dream makes the most of the place, and Overnight is a hymn of travel.

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