oldbloke: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oldbloke at 10:21am on 18/10/2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15310601/

LOS ANGELES - Picasso’s famed “Dream” painting turned into a nightmare for Las
Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally gave the multimillion
dollar canvas an elbow.

Wynn had just finalized a $139 million sale to another collector of his
painting, called “Le Reve” (The Dream), when he poked a finger-sized hole in the
artwork while showing it to friends at his Las Vegas office a couple of weeks
ago.

Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, who witnessed and related the incident in
her blog on the Huffington Post Web site (www.huffingtonpost.com), said Wynn had
raised his hand to show the group something about Picasso’s 1932 portrait of his
mistress Marie-Therese Walter.

“At that moment, his elbow crashed backward right through the canvas. There was
a terrible noise,” Ephron wrote, noting that Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an
eye disease that damages peripheral vision.

“Smack in the middle ... was a black hole the size of a silver dollar. ’Oh
s---,’ he said. ’Look what I’ve done. Thank goodness it was me.’”

Wynn’s office on Tuesday confirmed the story, an account of which also appeared
in this week’s The New Yorker. Both accounts said Wynn had decided to release
the buyer from the sale agreement and to repair and keep the painting himself.

Wynn, a millionaire casino developer and art collector, developed the Mirage and
Bellagio resorts in Las Vegas in the 1990s, which spearheaded a profusion of
luxury hotels and casinos on the once-seedy Las Vegas Strip.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or
redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior
written consent of Reuters.
oldbloke: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] oldbloke at 03:10pm on 18/10/2006
Le Petit Blanc in Manc is rather good, actually.
oldbloke: (Default)

RGP

posted by [personal profile] oldbloke at 10:39pm on 18/10/2006
There's a disconcerting tendency for me to hear about certain news items first on news:rec.gambling.poker. Eg, a flyover collapsed somewhere in the north american continent, causing a small number of deaths - no mention elsewhere. And it was there I first heard that Bush had signed the bill that does away with habeas corpus for people who aren't US citizens.

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