Review of Immersive Van Gogh Los Angeles, California, United States

Van Gogh immersive experience are real-life or virtual reality (VR) exhibits of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. The events, held in cities around the world, are typically set up in large gallery spaces. Images or videos of the artist’s works are projected onto walls, ceilings, and floors, sometimes accompanied by animations, narrations, music, or fragrances.

Opened since May 2021, located at Lighthouse Immersive and Impact Museums, the catalysts of the mesmerizing digital art space, brings its sensation at Los Angeles. The Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit makes its mark. Astonishing in scale and breathtakingly imaginative, experience Van Gogh’s art in a completely new and unforgettable way. The visually-striking exhibition encourages guests to experience the awe-inspiring works of post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh through 500,000 cubic feet of immersive projections, 60,600 frames of video and 90,000,000 pixels. Wander through entrancing, moving images that highlight brushstrokes, detail, and color, truly illuminating the mind of the genius.

Immersive Van Gogh is the brainchild of Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi. It promises, via 100 projectors, an hour-long experience completely bathing visitors in Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest hits, accompanied by “experimental electronic music with pure, ethereal and simple-seeming piano” by composer Luca Longobardi.

Immersed in Van Gogh’s works – from his sunny landscapes and night scenes to his portraits and still life paintings. The installation includes the Mangeurs de pommes de terre (The Potato Eaters, 1885), the Nuit étoilée (Starry Night, 1889), Les Tournesols (Sunflowers, 1888), and La Chambre à coucher (The Bedroom, 1889), and so much more.

The exhibit is designed and conceived by Massimiliano Siccardi, with soundtrack by Luca Longobardi, who both pioneered immersive digital art experiences in France. Listen to the story behind Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit, voiced by acclaimed Stratford actor, Colm Feore.

The name Vincent van Gogh can conjure up one of the vivid paintings that have become his legacy. From his vibrant sunflowers to his moody landscapes, introspective self-portraits, Starry Night (1889) and more, Van Gogh’s art has become iconic. It’s hard to believe that, during his lifetime, Van Gogh’s art was not appreciated. He has, in fact, become the art world’s archetype of the ‘misunderstood genius’. The Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit, delves into the mind of the artist, bringing his work to life.

His art can be found in the most prestigious museums across the globe – the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Art Institute of Chicago, Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the National Gallery in London, Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This immersive experience, with the latest technology, made up for the regret of not being able to see all the Van Gogh series at once.

The lifelike virtual immersive experience, feel the most realistic restoration of the scene depicted by Van Gogh. Not only that, this immersive exhibition puts more emphasis on restoring Van Gogh’s creative mentality. By restoring some scenes of Van Gogh’s letters, this genius wants to express the most incomprehensible fantasies to get the most detailed and true depiction. Today, anyone hearing the name Vincent van Gogh can conjure up one of the vivid paintings that have become his legacy.

The Artist
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.

Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, highly elaborate studies in black and white, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work.

From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions and soon turned to oil painting. Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals. He was aware that many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise, so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.

In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he only became famous after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination. His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh’s works are among the world’s most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world’s largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Immersive experiences
The first immersive experiences of van Gogh art took place in Europe in the 2000s. Other artists have also been featured in similar shows, including Picasso and Monet, though van Gogh’s popularity makes his shows the most successful. The first showing, in 2008, was titled “Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition”. The exhibit was created by Annabelle Mauger, who built off a model her husband’s grandfather created, known as “Image Totale”.

Numerous van Gogh events are being held in mid- to large-size U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia and Charlotte. Larger cities like Boston, Dallas, Miami, and New York City have multiple shows through multiple vendors. Museums in Columbus, Dallas, Houston, and Santa Barbara are hosting unaffiliated traditional exhibits of van Gogh’s works, running over similar periods to the immersive exhibitions.

Most of the experiences involve guests moving from room to room, with walls (and sometimes floors or ceilings) decorated with moving projections of van Gogh’s works. The works are typically accompanied by music set to pair with them. Some exhibits also use sensory tools like aromas of cedar, cypress, lemon, or nutmeg to help visitors feel more immersed with the works. Some events involve virtual reality headsets that take visitors through the artist’s experiences.

The original show, “Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition”, shows works from the artist’s last two years living. There is separately in New York “Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition”. The “Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit”, designed by Massimiliano Siccardi, is adapted for each space it is exhibited in. The show tells van Gogh’s story with a loose stream of consciousness, using large images and animations to demonstrate what “flashed before his eyes” before the artist died.

Showings in the United States grew traction following the 2020 Netflix series Emily in Paris. The show depicts a van Gogh-themed experience in Paris. Some of these shows were rescheduled due to outbreaks of the virus.

Highlights
The exhibit is a strikingly spectacular digital art exhibition that invites audiences to “step inside” the legendary works of post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh, evoking his highly emotional and chaotic inner consciousness through art, light, music, movement, and imagination. Featuring stunning towering projections that illuminate the mind of the artistic genius.

The exhibition will feature a curated selection of images from Van Gogh’s 2,000+ lifetime catalog of masterpieces, including Mangeurs de Pommes de Terre (The Potato Eaters, 1885), Nuit étoilée (Starry Night, 1889), Les Tournesols (Sunflowers, 1888), and La Chambre à coucher (The Bedroom, 1889). Paintings will be presented as to how the artist first saw the scenes, based on an active life and moving landscapes turned into sharp yet sweeping brush strokes.

The exhibit uses music, color, movement, and light to envelop visitors in the artist’s work. It’s meant to present scenes as glimpses of active life set among moving landscapes. Organizers also are using touchless methods for taking tickets and incorporating social distancing markers made of lights.