Anyone read this? Rachel Connolly in the Guardian writing about the immersive Van Gogh experience.
Repetition and familiarity are everywhere in our culture. From the commercial novels advertised entirely in terms of their similarity to popular titles from the previous year or two, to endless and proliferating film franchises, the selling point of so many things now is, in effect: this is a slightly (even very) worse version of something you've seen already. The "immersive art" concept offered by companies like Lighthouse Immersive is the purest form of this wearying trend, so recent news that Lighthouse has filed for bankruptcy feels like a faintly promising development.
Lighthouse Immersive puts on shows in which reproductions of work by household-name artists are blown up and projected on to the walls of galleries. Music is piped into the space to curate the mood, taking the place that imagination plays in a traditional exhibition. The idea is that these magnified projections encourage an audience to appreciate the finer details of certain famous paintings.
But she argues:
In its most popular show, the travelling Van Gogh immersive experience, some of the most celebrated works, such as Sunflowers, are magnified and cast over the walls. None of the original paintings are to be seen. You could, if the notion struck you, do this in your own house with a projector. Indeed, when I first read about the concept, I thought it sounded like the kind of "bored afternoon" entertainment dreamed up by a stoned teenager.
An experience like this which warps the scale and form of the reproductions, and so undermines creative decisions taken by the artist in making their work that it seems less about finding new ways to contextualise art, or bring it to new audiences, than about leaching as much money as possible out of the Van Gogh brand name.
Now, first up, she has an excellent point about the price of these sort of events. They are expensive for what they are. But I'm less convinced that they are elitist as such.
I went one of the Van Gogh events last year. While I came away irked by the Van Gogh branding in the overpriced merch shop, puzzled by some of the deeply questionable design/artistic/presentation decisions in terms of the large scale projected imagery during the audio-visual main presentation and certain I'd never return to that one or one about Van Gogh again, it didn't seem as negative an experience as Connolly suggests.
I'd expected it to be a lot more dumbed down but in truth there was a good deal to learn about the paintings, techniques and history. Yes, the installations before the projected imagery were a little dilapidated, but they were information heavy. It was useful to see the physical reproductions of the paintings. It might not have been great, but it was fine, even interesting. I've never been very interested or fond of Van Gogh's work - it's too ubiquitous to my mind. But, the opportunity to learn was there. That certainty about not returning hasn't gone away, but for someone who had a passing interest in that artist, or any artist treated similarly, I wouldn't see this as a terrible experience even if I didn't want to replicate it soon.
Connolly argues that:
There can be a tendency to treat any derision of this kind of themepark-ification of art as intellectual snobbery or elitism. But I think the reverse is true. An imagination is free and everyone has one. Reading about art history and going to galleries regularly can be helpful to contextualise things, but nobody really needs a formal education to be moved by, or to appreciate art. The idea that Van Gogh's work can't be enjoyed without the aid of gizmos and contraptions – and an inflated cost – strikes me as the most cynical and elitist approach to art I can imagine.
But not everyone is going to have access to the originals. And the price, while I think it was excessive, wouldn't amount to that needed for a trip to a city with those originals in it (perish the thought we'd even factor in climate change and travel to all this). Given that basic constraint what mediation would those interested in Van Gogh have to endure if they couldn't access the originals? They'd see it on screens or in photographic reproduction. These are perfectly good, but there's something to be said for seeing the reproductions that were on display. That alone would have been enough, I could have done without the audio-visual presentation.
And there's definitely a problem with the whole 'experience' culture where fairly banal events and happenings are made out to be life-changing, be they books, films, gigs or exhibitions in art galleries. But recontextualisation of art is not the worst thing in the world and for all the commercial aspects there's nothing forcing anyone to pay for the march or spend any more money than the tickets themselves.
There's also so much more potential around these immersive 'experiences'. For a start, having curated exhibitions myself, I'd have rearranged and reworked the exhibition before the experience and cut the merchandise store in half, if not indeed doing away with it entirely (as to the prices there, well). A fair bit of pruning wouldn't have hurt. But cynical, elitist? No harm in bringing art or art experiences out of galleries.
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