We saw it here in MSP a couple months ago. Very well done and fun.
I went to see it in Chicago and thought it was overpriced. My mother loves Van Gogh and we plan on seeing it in Grand Rapids, where the price is much more reasonable.
They had a couple of these in Kansas City around the end of last year. We saw ads on TV for one, which looked kind of interesting, but then when I went googling for more info discovered a completely different exhibit. The one I stumbled on by accident seemed a little shifty - according to their website they either didn’t have a venue for it yet, or they did but were keeping the location a secret for some reason. So yeah, buyer beware indeed.
The one in Boston (IIRC, it was Monet, not Van Gogh) had the exact same MO. They eventually did line up a venue but it meant you had buy the tickets before knowing where it was going to be.
The one we went to a week or so ago billed itself as the real, original, honest-to-gosh genuine Immersive Van Gogh exhibit.
One thing about the exhibit I thought was kind of cheesy was that the projected paintings were often animated. Van Gogh’s bold brushstrokes already give a feeling of movement in his still paintings- there’s no need to do all the work for the viewer.
Imagine doing similar with an immersive Picasso exhibit. Cubism also intended to show movement / the passage of time in a still painting. Imagine taking a Picasso from his Cubist phase, deconstructing it and animating it to display what the still painting was attempting to convey to the viewer. Doesn’t that sound like a debasement of his work? Either that, or a genius idea. Hmmm, time to fire up Adobe Photoshop and AfterEffects. Note to self: look up “how to get permission from estate of Picasso to use his work in adapted art”.
We’ve been seeing TV/internet ads for one of the vG shows — don’t know which one — and all I could tell from them is that you walk through hallways with his paintings projected on the floor/walls/ceilings. Seemed pretty pointless.
OK, that makes more sense. Still, we spent a full day at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam a while back, and later spent a couple of days in Arles, so we already know his story pretty well. Would there be any other reason to attend this show? (I’d love to hear a “Yes.”)
I think you get more of a feel of his psychosis. You really are immersed. But you’re not missing a huge deal if you don’t go. I’m glad I went, but my tickets were a free gift.
I’ve seen a few of these, and have enjoyed them. The thing is, though, I have a fine arts degree, and I personally don’t learn much from their presentation. But I have two kids, and I have found these shows an excellent vehicle for getting them visually engaged and teaching them about the various artists. There is clear and deliberate thought behind the deconstructed animations, at least in the shows I’ve seen, curated by the original fine-art team in Paris. It’s not just, like, random PowerPoint effects being applied indiscriminately; their approach varies from artist to artist.
If you don’t know what you’re looking at, they’re just fun visuals. But if you know something about the artists, you can see that the presentation emphasizes particular qualities about each artist individually. The Cezanne show highlighted color and contrast and brushwork. The Picasso show emphasized the flexibility of space, using animation to take the images apart and reassemble them in different ways. The Dali show cherry-picked recurring elements from throughout his canon, juxtaposing them to show his preoccupations and their evolution over time. The mini-show on the architect Gaudi did something similar. And so on.
I sit with my kids, pointing those things out, and asking for their thoughts on what they’re seeing. So when the sequence of the presentation is complete, I’ve used it to give my kids a guided introduction to each artist.
And I know for a fact that the information has stuck. When we went to the Rosengart Museum in Lucerne, my kids were thrilled to learn that they have an extensive Picasso collection, and they went from canvas to canvas, excitedly giving me their observations, applying what they’d learned and demonstrating they understood how to “read” Picasso’s work. And not in a homeworky, let’s-patronize-Dad kind of way; it was legitimately enjoyable for them to realize they truly knew what they were looking at. As an art nerd, it was enormously gratifying to witness.
Whether this experience might translate for you in any meaningful way, I don’t know. And I also don’t know if the traveling knockoff shows have been assembled and curated with similar levels of thought and care. But for my own situation, it’s been extraordinarily valuable.
We saw the original Immersive Van Gogh exhibit here last November. It was in a converted warehouse in not the nicest part of town. I thought it was a very engaging mix of visuals (through computer animation, the stalks of wheat in a landscape seemed to wave in the wind, for instance) and music (classical and electronica). I wish there had been more storytelling, but as a way to be saturated by Van Gogh, so to speak, I really liked it.
The ticket prices were reasonable, but the swag in the gift shop was outrageously overpriced ($40 for a small fridge magnet, IIRC), so we didn’t buy anything.
I’ve gotten very interested in the artist in recent years, having read Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s massive, extremely detailed bio, Van Gogh: The Life. Even making allowances for his mental illness, Vincent comes across as an amazingly talented painter but a pushy, annoying, ungrateful mooch. Theo was a saint to put up with him and strive to be so helpful over so many years.
Explain, please
He barraged his brother Theo with letters demanding that Theo do more to sell his paintings and talk him up among the Paris elite. He picked fights with anyone who disagreed with him on religious, moral or artistic issues. He never, as I recall, thanked Theo for his boundless patience, loans (really gifts, as I don’t think he ever repaid anything) or encouragement. Oh, and he was a spendthrift - he would often take the money Theo sent and immediately squander it, leaving little or nothing for food or rent, which would set off another round of wheedling letters.
I love his paintings, but he would be an exhausting and/or aggravating person to try to befriend.
Thanks. We’ll probably go (if we can get the teenager to agree). I hadn’t known there were similar shows about other artists, and it sounds as though you’ve seen most/all of them. I’m jealous.
At one point, he and Paul Gaugin were roommates, and van Gogh was talking about accompanying Gaugin to Tahiti. But when van Gogh got drunk and attacked him with a knife, Gaugin literally slipped out in the middle of the night and left town.
So yeah, not a great friend.
To be clear, I’m describing the experience of l’Atelier des Lumières in Paris specifically. I don’t know if any of the traveling shows or global imitators have the same intentions or pedigree. I certainly hope it measures up.
BTW, I highly recommend At Eternity’s Gate. It’s an engrossing, beautifully-crafted biopic about the last few years of van Gogh’s life. Willem Dafoe is, of course and as expected, simply outstanding in the lead role, and Rupert Friend as his brother Theo and Oscar Isaac as his fellow painter/frenemy Paul Gauguin also shine. The camera work is occasionally just a bit too jumpy, and the music a bit too intrusive, but these are minor flaws.
Any VVG fan should see the film.
