It might not have occurred to me to go to an immersive Van Gogh exhibit if one of my quilt group friends hadn't moved to Indiana and waxed euphoric about getting tickets. Then I noticed that the exhibit was in St. Pete, Florida, which is closer to me, and included tickets to the Dali museum, which once I found exorbitantly expensive. But then, I got word that the exhibit was coming to Miami in the summer, and since we were still in a time of COVID, it seemed wiser to go closer to home.
The remains of my quilt group down here agreed to go and chose a date and paid our money. Then our Indiana friend actually went to the exhibit, and she was . . . well, let's just say she was underwhelmed. But since we had already paid our money, off we went.
On Saturday, we drove down to the Olympia Theatre, a historic theatre I'd never heard of before we went. What an amazing piece of architecture! I found myself getting distracted by all the detail work on the ceilings and the carvings around the proscenium arch of the theatre space itself. I found myself wondering what the theatre would look like when it wasn't set up to be an immersive Van Gogh experience.
Before we got to the immersive part of the experience, we had some museum-esque displays to wander through. I was glad for the reminders of Van Gogh's life and work. He's never been one of my favorites, but I like his work well enough. I do understand why he is a rock star artist, but I do worry that people hear his life story and assume that one must be psychotic to be an artist. Julia Cameron warned about the Edgar Allen Poe theory of creativity, that one must be mad to be a good artist, and it's an idea that's hard to shake out of people.
Some day, let me write a separate blog post about our damaging theories of creativity. We assume that one must be insane or troubled or drearily depressed to be creative--not true. We assume that if you're not born with talent already, why bother--not true. But that's a blog topic for another day.
We wandered through the museum-like displays, museum-like in its information, but far from museum-like in the quality of the art displayed. There was a cool theatre with a huge, human-height pot (ginger jar shaped) onto which designs that may or may not have come from a Van Gogh painting were projected and that was cool as they melted in and out of each other. But most of the Van Gogh reproductions were of even less quality than one would find on a poster--more like strange computer-generated screens of painting size.
Then we were let into a big room where people stood, sat on the floor, or got a space on a cushion or one of the benches. Unlike the pictures of people walking through the projections, we stayed in the same space, looking up and around. We were lucky to get a bench. The room was created with screens all around and carpet on the floor, and projections moved around the room. There were about 8 segments, and I think the idea was to feel like we became part of the painting. And yet, in places, the painting moved. Some of the movement was effective, like the starry night swirls moving. Some was amateurish, like a man behind a cart moving forward.
At first, I liked it--childlike, I moved my head to capture all the images, not realizing that they traveled across the screens, so if one looked at one place, one wouldn't miss a bit. At first, it felt stunning to be surrounded by all those rich brush strokes.
After awhile, it was boring in places, especially in the paintings without much to stare at. I could look at dark blue swirls for a lot longer than branches of cherry trees--I do wonder why that is. Was I just getting a bit bored by that part of the projection? Or was it something about the image itself? I'm still not sure.
We exited into a room where people could do some art themselves, but by then, we were ready to go. If I had a small child with me, we'd have done some drawing and then gone back to watch some more. Instead, we exited into a gift shop. Since I'm trying to get rid of stuff, I didn't indulge. Plus, that stuff is always so pricey.
Later, I returned to this essay in The New York Times, written by an art critic who doesn't understand why we don't just go to see the art work itself. How nice it must be to have that kind of art in the neighborhood. In it, I learned that there are at least 2 of the touring shows. We saw "Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience." Our friend in Indiana saw the other one. She found the music overwhelming. Ours was not overwhelming, but we didn't have to hear Edith Piaf on an endless loop either.
On the way back, we stopped at Nana's, a place that opened during the pandemic, a place that is primarily take out and warm up back home, along with a few tables. We each got a shrimp stir-fry that was fairly tasty. We took it back home to my house to eat, since we're still not quite ready for restaurant dining. The dish was worth the $10.95 price--we'd have paid more at a restaurant for food of similar quality.
Was Immersive Van Gogh worth $50, plus the $18 to valet park? Let me first say that I have a very low price point for things. I think that concert tickets should be about $20, because the first concert tickets I ever bought were $9 each. I think that a restaurant meal shouldn't be over $15 or $20; if it is, it should be of incredible quality and multiple courses.
So, no, the Immersive Van Gogh was not worth all that money. But it did mean that I carved out time and motivation to be with friends, so that part was worth the money. It did give us a focus and a reason for leaving the house, so that we overcame our pandemic wariness.
Like that art critic, I am looking forward to returning to museums and seeing the real art. And it makes me want to pick up some brushes and paint again.
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