Las Vegas Weekly

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The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts goes for Round 2 in its partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A Sense of Place: Landscapes From Monet to Hockney, opening April 16, follows the same formula as Figuratively Speaking: A Survey of the Human Form—multiple artists from vastly different time periods and backgrounds speak on the same subject matter in various media (mostly paintings).

The more than 30-piece show taken from the three collections (MGM Resorts included) features works by artists you would expect to see at a landscape exhibit—Boudin, Millet, Monet and Dubois—but juxtaposes that with work by contemporary artists working today, like German artist Torben Giehler, whose “Boogie Woogie” (1999), a brightly colored, hard-edged-style rendering of an aerial view of a landscape, reflects the digital era.

Also included are works by Ben Aronson, known for his urban landscapes, and Eric Aho, whose expressive paintings depict the immediacy and drama of nature in action. Then there’s “Silueta” by Ana Mendieta, a photographer known most for her jarring political and feminist photography, and David Hockney’s “Garrowby Hill,” which takes the artist out of his Southern California vista into New England.

Tarissa Tiberti, who curated the Bellagio show, says Sense of Place was partly inspired by MFA’s Changing Soil and includes some of that work but was expanded to show the larger conversation.

It also takes leaps, she says, by placing Vik Muniz, who references other artists by creating renditions of their works, using pigment on paper photographed, near Impressionist landscape painter Claude Monet.