This is especially true in America. The discipline of art history was built on having access to reproductions. There was little art in America—that’s changed, obviously—and you had to travel to museums.
‘Immersive Van Gogh’ Has Upsides and Downsides, Explains Art Prof
During a trip to Paris a few years ago, Art Professor C. Shaw Smith visited L’Atelier des Lumiéres, a cavernous space that pioneered projecting the works of legendary artists in massive, high-resolution formats.
Smith’s timing was perfect; he used the experience to close the final chapter of the textbook he was working on—Palimpsests of Patrimony: A Concise History of Art and Architecture in France—and now, the installations he viewed in France are touring North America.
“Immersive Van Gogh” is coming to Charlotte , and 13 other American cities, in June. The Charlotte installation will be set up in Camp North End, a one-time Ford plant, from June 17 through Sept. 12.
But how does such a modern presentation square with Van Gogh’s actual work? “The Starry Night,” one of Van Gogh’s most recognizable masterpieces measures only 30 inches by 36 inches when seen in person at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The Immersive Van Gogh installation will reproduce Van Gogh’s paintings across 300,000 cubic feet—with added animation.
Smith, the Joel O. Conarroe Professor of Art, shares his thoughts.
What was your reaction to the exhibit you saw in France?
It is spectacular. It’s kind of like Mercedes Stadium in Atlanta. It’s almost dizzying. You’re overwhelmed by the technology.
As a purist of these things, it does upset me a little bit.
The images are 20 feet high and, of course, the real paintings are not that big. The danger is that society focuses on the simulated experience. It is spectacular, but it can take the place of the original. It can manipulate that reality.
Does this immersive presentation distort the experience?
It goes both ways. You lose scale in the simulation. I can’t tell you how many students I’ve had who would say, “I didn’t realize you could see the brushstrokes” after seeing one of Van Gogh’s paintings in person. And that’s really what’s essential.
In the original works, what you’re really talking about is the hand. In this case, you’re talking about the eye. The immersive presentation is a way to create accessibility and the spectacle. It has very little to do with the art itself.
The simulation animates his paintings, too; you can see his famous sunflowers grow, so it plays with things that are well beyond the scope of the painting. A purist would say that’s bad. One side of me agrees. On the other side, I see it as popularizing.
The Starry Nights of Vincent van Gogh (2) : Starry Night over the Rhône
As we have seen in the previous post The Starry Nights of Vincent Van Gogh’s (1): Café Terrace at night, in Arles, Vincent has therefore been living in the old city of Arles since February 1888. In mid-September, after writing to his sister Wilhelmina (or Willemien according to the scripts) that he wanted “now absolutely to paint a starry sky“, he takes action in his Café Terrace, where he shows a small piece of sky dotted with a few stars of the constellation Aquarius.
A much wider sky is represented in The starry night over the Rhône, painted shortly after, at the end of September. This 72.5 cm x 92 cm canvas, now on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, shows in the foreground, on the bank, a couple seen from the front and moored boats. The silhouettes of roofs and bell towers stand out against the blue of the sky, the city lights reflecting on the river. Among the many stars we recognize in the center the seven stars of the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major, which illuminate a sky in shades of blue. As we will see, the canvas raises more questions than the Café Terrace, due to the incompatibility between the terrestrial view and the celestial view. A detailed survey was conducted in 2012 by photographer Raymond Martinez, whose main elements I am adding here with some personal additions.
The date of execution is confirmed by a letter addressed to his brother Théo on September 29th, when he has just finished the painting of which he attaches a sketch: ”Included herewith little croquis of a square no. 30 canvas — the starry sky at last, actually painted at night, under a gas-lamp. The sky is green-blue, the water is royal blue, the areas of land are mauve. The town is blue and violet. The gaslight is yellow, and its reflections are red gold and go right down to green bronze. Against the green-blue field of the sky the Great Bear has a green and pink sparkle whose discreet paleness contrasts with the harsh gold of the gaslight. Two small coloured figures of lovers in the foreground.”
On October 2nd, 1888 he sent a slightly different sketch to his painter friend Eugène Boch, with this description: ” And lastly, a study of the Rhône, of the town under gaslight and reflected in the blue river. With the starry sky above — with the Great Bear — with a pink and green sparkle on the cobalt blue field of the night sky, while the light of the town and its harsh reflections are of a red gold and a green tinged with bronze. Painted at night. »
Now let’s look for the place where the painting was done. A sentence from the September 14th letter [Letter 678] to his sister indicates that he certainly painted it on the spot: “Now there’s a painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is coloured pale sulphur, lemon green. I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night. In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime. But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway. It’s quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can’t make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it’s the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.“
By comparing the current landscape (day and night) with that of the painting, we can spot the exact positioning of the bell towers of the churches of Saint-Julien and Saint-Martin-du-Méjan, the curve of the Rhône on the surface of which, at night, are still reflected the lights of street lamps (now electric, no more gas!), and in the center, the Pont de Trinquetaille:
From this we deduce the very precise location of Van Gogh’s easel and the angle within which the terrestrial landscape is inscribed: the orientation is South-West.
Now let’s take a look at the starry sky of the artwork. With the help of the astronomical software Stellarium, I could reconstruct the part of the sky visible in Arles on September 20th, 1888, similar to that of the painting:
We can see that the Big Dipper is in the same position as in the painting, even if the lowest star of the Chariot is slightly shifted to the right. The stars outside the Chariot are also fairly well positioned. But it is clear that it is not the sky which can be seen above the city and the river downstream in the direction of the Southwest, because the Big Dipper is a circumpolar constellation, only visible in direction North!
Here is the sky that Van Gogh saw over the city when he painted the earth scene:
The view below by Google Earth represents very precisely, in red the angle inscribed by the landscape of the city and in blue the angle of the celestial landscape.
Why did Vincent Van Gogh represent the Big Dipper whereas it was not visible in this direction? Three hypotheses are to be considered:
- The sky was overcast that day and Vincent represented the stars from memory. This seems unlikely, given the large number of stars outside of the Big Dipper that are correctly positioned.
- He found the sky above the city was star-poor and preferred to represent a familiar constellation.
- He took place facing the Rhône with the canvas parallel to the bank. In this case, he had on his left the city illuminated by lampposts with reflections on the downstream of the river and on his right, upstream, the Big Dipper. Then, on the canvas, he merged the two plans. In the latter case, he created a landscape at the bottom of the painting and another at the top, grouping all the space around him in the same frame …. A century before the advent of Photoshop!
And that’s not all! It is extraordinary to note that Van Gogh has, not without malice, positioned the stars in alignment with the street lights, which gives the illusion that the reflections of the gas street lights on the Rhône are those of the stars! The couple in the foreground finds itself under an area without reflections, because it is the place where the river is crossed by the bridge and there are no bright stars above.
By this new attitude and this capacity for synthesis, Van Gogh once again upsets the canons of painting of his time and announces the future evolutions of art, cubism, surrealism, abstraction … However, the work was hardly appreciated in its time. Thanks to Théo, it was exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants in 1889 in Paris and had no success: ” Now I have to tell you again, that the exhibition of Independents is open and that there is your two paintings, “the irises” and the starry night. The last one is in the wrong place because you can’t get far enough, the room is very narrow, but the other one is extremely good. “(Letter [799] of September 5th, 1889). Theo himself judges it too stylized and prefers what he calls “real things”!
In the next post devoted to the Starry Night above Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, we will see that van Gogh went even further in the superposition of terrestrial and celestial views, a sign of a true metaphysics tinged with mysticism that he has repeatedly expressed in his correspondence …
Stepping into Starry Night: Van Gogh’s true colours on display in immersive exhibit
Vincent Van Gogh is credited with saying the following: “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.” In the artist’s namesake exhibit, “Imagine Van Gogh,” his dream has been made a reality. The vibrant colours and heavy brush strokes, for which Van Gogh is known and loved, come to life in a three-dimensional space. “Imagine Van Gogh” makes use of Image Totale, a technology that projects imagery onto the walls and floor of the exhibition room. Unlike in a traditional museum setting, visitors can move freely throughout the installation — a more pleasant experience than crowding around a tiny frame to catch a glimpse of The Starry Night at MoMA. Here, visitors have space to wander without feeling cramped or rushed, allowing the artwork to guide them (while still adhering to social distancing protocols). This viewing experience is a departure from the sterility and sanctuary of a museum and is therefore consumed in a different way. In museums, photography is often prohibited; in “Imagine Van Gogh,” it is expected. Such a spectacle encourages — almost begs — visitors to document and share their experience on their smartphones. You’ve probably already seen photos and videos of the installation through your mutuals on social media. (After all, if it doesn’t appear on Instagram, it didn’t happen.) Whether this cheapens Van Gogh’s art or makes it more accessible is up for viewers to decide. Because the exhibit is three-dimensional, you can also witness how others react to the artwork, which is part of the experience itself. When you take a moment to people-watch, it immediately becomes clear how art mimics life, or perhaps, how life mimics art.
[‘auto’] Isabella Falsetti
The atmosphere of “Imagine Van Gogh” is overwhelming yet intimate. Echoing the visual components of the exhibit, sweeping instrumentals evoke a similar catharsis. Rows of hanging poster boards line the entrance, where visitors can read about Van Gogh’s life, career and inspiration. Anticipation builds as music drifts in from the exhibition room. Stepping into the Image Totale, the effect of the music intensifies, abruptly shifting from serene to turbulent. Every now and then a transition would catch me off guard, like when the screen changed from a calm pastoral scene to a striking portrait. The larger-than-life self-portraits are especially haunting as you become locked into eye contact with the artist himself, creating an unspoken dialogue between the painting and the viewer. This, combined with the images projected onto the bodies of visitors wandering the exhibit, transforms the viewer into the subject.
[‘auto’] Isabella Falsetti
Van Gogh’s paintings are accompanied by video clips, photographs of nineteenth-century Paris and excerpts from his letters, providing a further glimpse into the artist’s world. It takes about twenty minutes to view all of the images before they loop, leaving room for new insights to be made with each viewing. Though it is less formal (and more expensive) than visiting a museum, the sheer scale and grandeur of “Imagine Van Gogh” offers a dramatic viewing experience that suits the public’s perception of the artist.
Visitors too can feel deeply, just as Van Gogh had hoped people would see in him when viewing his art. Vancouver’s “Imagine Van Gogh” installation is located at Canada Place and will be on display until October 15, 2021.
