A Moment of Escape

I want to think that I can speak for most readers by saying that we all have wanted to live in a fictional world; not The Hunger Games (never The Hunger Games), but a world unlike our own. What if that world was our favorite painting? Drawing and painting, like any art form, are ways of expressing and escaping the confines of reality, and the Van Gogh Immersive Experience plays with this artistic definition in a dream-like sense. This experience is a traveling exhibit of Van Gogh’s work along with immersive experiences that include virtual reality and animations of Van Gogh’s artwork to create a living canvas.  

For me, this experience was an absolute dream come true. I have loved Van Gogh since high school, so the chance to live through this was an opportunity that I jumped at. The one-stop metro ride with my friend from Brookland to Rhode Island seemed far too short for the actual adventure that awaited us in the building. This building itself was unassuming, probably having spent a past life as an abandoned Kmart or Staples before it was rented out for this exhibit. It  nestled itself between some apartment buildings just off of the metro and was only distinguishable by the line of people on the sidewalk and a security guard checking for vaccination status.

The exhibit began with the history of Van Gogh’s life and then moved into his actual paintings. This artist, who remains popular even today, began his life as a Dutch painter. Most, however, will know him for cutting off his ear or using the post-impressionist artform. He worked as an art dealer and most of his own paintings were unpopular; Van Gogh notably only became famous for his work posthumously. The reasoning for him cutting off his ear is a lot simpler than most people might assume. Van Gogh was known for having psychotic and depressive episodes; he was known to harm himself, sometimes accidentally and other times on purpose. The exhibit began with all this information up front and then worked towards his paintings on display. 

The ability to see sequences of his works and the variations he did over time was incredible, which inspired my slightly (overtly) fangirling over Starry Night and Starry Night Over the Rhone. Seeing so many of Van Gogh’s pieces back to back really emphasizes his practice in form and similar mediums until he ultimately was pleased with the product. This is seen in his work on sunflowers. The paintings of sunflowers that he created lined an entire wall.  About seven pictures were devoted to the same flowers and the same vase, but each one varied in the amount of practice he did with the painting.

Another informational aspect the museum emphasized was Van Gogh’s mental instability. Having had multiple depressive and suicidal episodes, he had himself admitted to a psychiatric facility in hopes of receiving treatment. These depressive periods in his life were also his moments of greatest artistry, when he would create Starry Night and other works that are displayed in the exhibit.  

This area of the museum, however, was just the beginning of this exhibit, which began to get more interactive as I moved through the building. From taking a seat in a reconstruction of the bedroom he painted called Bedroom in Arles, or the three-dimensional detail of a geisha woman based on his painting A Courtesan (after Eisen), the exhibit put you in his paintings. The Bedroom in Arles was an interesting look at the 3D view of what Van Gogh painted, but also showed the viewer the world as this man lived in it. The room he was painting was a place where he stayed, so being able to step inside the same room let me experience that place as he saw it and how he represented it in his art. The geisha woman was a creative way of rethinking this image. The woman was hung up in parts, and as we changed angles the visual would break apart and reassemble to become this woman. From the side it was completely unassuming, just pieces of wood that were hung up with fishing wire, but as we walked around we saw her. Even her shadow could be seen when you came to the right angle and looked at her from straight ahead.  

The history of Van Gogh’s life was swimming somewhere in my mind as I watched a family with small children chasing the flowers on the ground trying to catch them, catlike and delighted. Van Gogh saw these images in dreams. This may be how he actually experienced his paintings. These children now play in the fancies of such a mind. This shows that such a depressed person had such a beautiful mind and thoughts and was still able to create this art.  

Something that strikes me is the fact that Van Gogh is seen as an artistic genius, and I, too, think of him as such, but he was imperfect and was working towards feeling better. He worked on the same painting of flowers for years until he deemed it perfect, and we still see all those “failed” paintings as masterpieces. His escapism, his dreams, and thoughts that got him through his depression are seen as beautiful by everyone. This pushes me to think about my own work in the world. Most people are trying to push towards perfection and their next major goal, but do not realize the beauty in what we have previously made in the world. They do not realize that the mistakes or issues that we all deal with are art in their own right, and maybe that is putting us as protagonists too much, but maybe it is what we need in life at times: an image or story that can help us get away from it all and appreciate everything that is here now. 

February 2022