Connoisseurship and Genuflection: The Public Display of Private Wealth in the Casinos of Macau (Part 1)
This essay is the first of a two-part series. Please follow the link to read part two.
The Hotel Lisboa and the Grand Lisboa, built in 1970 and 2005 respectively, are two prominent casino-hotels in Macau. At the lobbies of these buildings, hotel guests, gamblers and the general public would find themselves wandering among priceless artworks made from jade, ivory and other precious stones. Significant pieces include imperial Chinese antiques bought in auctions for millions of dollars and donated to the Beijing government. These are not the kinds of commercial art or simulated fantasies commonly associated with casinos. Instead, these artworks come from the private collection of the casino owner, Dr. Stanley Ho. Is this an attempt at flaunting to the unwashed masses who look in awe at this fantastic tableau of private wealth? Or, is it to civilize the public in a manner similar to modern museums in liberal democracies?
“How and when does the public display of private wealth become a form of philanthropy?”
I am drawn to these questions because they challenge the dominant scholarly interpretation of casino architecture as spectacles that induce hedonistic consumption. By looking closely at some of the casinos in Macau, I want to unpack the culturally specific valences of the spectacle and open up new ways of seeing the world through the casino. In particular, I ask: how and when does the public display of private wealth become a form of philanthropy?
Figure 1. Hotel Lisboa and Grand Lisboa, 2010. Photograph by Kah-Wee Lee.
The Hotel Lisboa and the Grand Lisboa
Though Ho’s company runs many casinos in Macau, it is in the Hotel Lisboa and the Grand Lisboa that the display of his personal art collection is concentrated. Separated by a road and connected via overhead and underground passages, these buildings are the trophies of Ho’s casino empire (figure 1). The Hotel Lisboa marks Ho’s monopoly which lasted from the 1960s to 2000, and was, throughout this period the most iconic and modern casino in the Portuguese colony. It is immediately recognizable by a birdcage hotel tower, bat-motif porte cochere and, as a result of multiple additions and renovations over the years, a dense labyrinthine interior (figure 2). After the handover to the PRC and the liberalization of the casino industry, Ho built the Grand Lisboa on the vacant piece of land between Hotel Lisboa and a Portuguese school. Inspired by the lotus flower (the official symbol of the Macau SAR) and the headdresses of Brazilian dancers, it is just as flamboyant as its predecessor (figure 3). As a pair, they serve as historical markers of Macau’s transition into a postsocialist and postcolonial enclave with privileged access to the world’s largest market of gamblers. Yet, they are also diminished by the cluster of Las Vegas-sized casinos that surround them. Ho’s empire has shrunk considerably after the termination of the monopoly in 2000. Though still remarkably profitable as one of six concessionaires, his company’s market share has dwindled steadily from 29% in 2011 to 16% in 2017. It is in this conjunction of historical legacy, foreign competition and Beijing’s patronage that one can interpret the public display of private wealth in these two buildings.
Figure 2. “Bird-cage” tower, Hotel Lisboa, Macau, 2016. Photograph by Kah-Wee Lee.
Vicarious Connoisseurship
Visitors to these casinos will immediately encounter a bewildering array of artworks. At the Grand Lisboa, the hotel and casino lobby are packed with exquisite sculptures in ivory, jade and rare wood, as well as antiques such as an eighteenth-century imperial Chinese throne, a nineteenth-century Qing dynasty musical clock, and a pair of shell paintings by an eighteenth-century German artist in the Rococo style (figure 4). A comprehensive renovation of the Hotel Lisboa in 2015 included a viewing gallery in the west lobby where fifteen pieces of sculptures are displayed (figure 5). Beyond these concentrated zones of art, individual pieces can also be found scattered in lift lobbies, corridors and gambling halls.
Figure 3. Grand Lisboa, Macau, 2016. Photograph by Kah-Wee Lee.
As spaces of representation, the lobbies of these casinos transform private wealth into a public exhibition imbued with contradictory meanings. Lacking any curatorial direction, the exhibition primarily communicates Ho’s immense wealth accumulated over the last fifty years as Macau’s gambling monopolist. It reveals Ho’s personal taste for jade, ivory and imperial Chinese treasures, which in a strange way humanizes him. Yet, at the same time, the exhibition distances him from the public—his connoisseurship and indulgence is not something anyone can understand or afford. This double-effect transforms the public display of private wealth into a gesture of magnanimity and nonchalance. Magnanimity because the general public is invited to partake vicariously in the refined luxury of the super-elite, in the crowded space of the lobbies where the artworks are at risk of damage and theft. Nonchalance because the very same act suggests that these artworks are dispensable and replaceable should they be damaged. Despite all the evocations of pricelessness, they only represent a small portion of Ho’s private collection and might not be his most precious pieces.
Figure 4. Grand Lisboa main lobby, Macau, 2010. Photograph by the author.
Figure 5. Viewing gallery in the West lobby, Hotel Lisboa, Macau, 2016. Photograph by Kah-Wee Lee.
The cultural system that simultaneously connects Ho to and distances him from the public also generates a distinct gaze. Here it is instructive to compare the casino lobby to the museum, and look closely at how artistic value is communicated to the public. Unlike the museum, many pieces of artwork do not come with explanatory plaques—they sit silently as if their aesthetic value is self-evident. In the case of those that do, the plaques do not provide key information like the name of the artist or when the piece was created. For example, take this description of an impressive ivory sculpture (figure 6):
A Fine Mammoth Tusk Carving of the Great Wall.
Carved from top grade mammoth tusk, it took six years by more than ten experienced craftsmen to create, including on-site surveying, research and examinations at the Great Wall of China. The carving portrays the everyday life of the locals and the scenes from Shanghaiguan to Jianyuguan, in exquisite details. With its life-like appearance, perfect proportions, and fine details created by superb craftsmanship, it is an outstanding and magnificent artwork.
Figure 6. Mammoth tusk sculpture, Grand Lisboa, 2016. Photograph by Kah-Wee Lee.
The plaque emphasizes the skill and labor of anonymous craftsmen, the uniqueness of the raw material and the story depicted in the sculpture. The signifiers of artistic value typically found in a museum—authorship, origin, age and rarity—are not all present. One does not know the vintage of the piece, where it was bought, the identity of the authors and their oeurve, nor does one learn about its cultural or historical significance. This is a common narrative pattern in the casino lobbies. In another similar sculpture, the craftsmen are praised for their ability to work with the curved shape of the tusk and carve life-like figures that depict a chapter from a Chinese mythological epic; and for a jade sculpture, the narration emphasizes the fact that jade of such a size is extremely rare and that a large portion of it had to be discarded in the process of carving the sculpture. Exchange value is connoted through the emphasis on labor, skill, raw material and waste. Thus, unlike the museum where exchange value is typically submerged to produce aesthetic disinterestedness, this pattern of narration conflates aesthetic value with exchange value even though it is the former that is overtly communicated. The viewer is thus directed to adopt the connoisseur’s gaze—to simultaneously enjoy and appraise. In this exhibitionary complex, to use Tony Bennett’s term, what is produced is not a citizen elevated in public virtue or historical consciousness. Rather it is a gaze oscillating between two states of aesthetic consumption: a sense of marvel where ignorance and inaccessibility of the artwork produce enjoyment, and a more calculative attitude generated through a vicarious adoption of Ho’s refined senses and business acumen. In this public exhibition of private wealth, we experience momentarily what it is like to see like Ho, without being able to spend like him.
This essay is the first of a two-part series. Please follow the link to read part two.
Author’s note: The author intends to expand this essay into a chapter for his book project, “The World in a Casino.” He wishes to express his gratitude to Timothy Simpson (University of Macau) for hosting him in 2016 on a visiting fellowship. The fieldwork conducted during the fellowship set him thinking about the “public display of private wealth” in these casinos.
