Gogh, plunge into a Starry Night

If you’ve ever stood before a Van Gogh painting and longed to disappear amongst the sunflowers or smell warm haystacks in a sunny field or dive into moonlight glimmering on a river or drift amongst the swirling stars, you must gogh forthwith to one of the immersive exhibits.

Forgive the puns, but Beyond Van Gogh and similar immersive shows in Canada, the U.S., and Britain are worth experiencing. Despite Covid, you’ll immediately want to book flights to the south of France to see just how these enveloping, digital projections compare to the blue-and-yellow landscapes that Vincent preferred over the city.

At least, that’s how I felt.

I’ve long loved Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings and have learned about his tortured yet talented life through seeing his artwork in galleries (including Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City), watching the gorgeous film Loving Vincent (the first fully-painted animated feature film), reading letters he exchanged with many people but particularly his brother Theo, and even doing a jigsaw puzzle featuring Café Terrace.

So when our friends Vida and Wayne suggested going to Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park to see the show, we jumped at the idea.

Don McLean’s song “Vincent (Starry Starry Night)” greeted us as we waited to enter, wondering if the hype was more than the reality. First, we zigzagged our way – six feet apart and masked – past educational panels that explained phases of his life, how he was inspired by impressionist painters, and developed his own style filled with movement, colour, and turbulence – all of which make his paintings a natural for this type of digital video show.

“This experience seeks, like the master himself, to start with something we know and to extend beyond what the eye can see,” explained one panel. “The unlikely pairing of the digital and the classical allows us to dive into this world of paint, to experience it from the inside, to vibrate to the rhythm of each of his works.”

We emerged into a huge rectangular room with three giant pillars across the diagonal – all projection screens, along with the floor, showing videos of Van Gogh’s paintings. Like others, we paused in the doorway, heads craned back to take it all in.

Orchestral music – including an ethereal version of “Here Comes the Sun” – accompanied the images that swirled and flowed and reformed into new scenes, down the walls and across the floor. The images always moved. Quotations appeared here and there. While we waited for Starry Night – everyone’s favourite – we saw farm workers, thatched cottages, windmills with their sails turning, leaves painted onto trees. Line drawings appeared as if his hand was drawing each one and then filling the lines with coloured paint – red roof tiles, ochre walls. A church bell tolled. What used to be floral still-lifes of poppies, irises, and sunflowers, came alive. Cherry blossoms bloomed on branches and then the petals flew away in a breeze. I wanted to lie under a cherry tree in France watching petals gently blow by.

The changing scenes had themes: a series of his many self-portraits had pipe smoke that curled upwards and eyes that occasionally blinked – just like the moving portraits in Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Castle. The scenes faded and then we were in a vast green field with puffy white clouds and birds floating by. Dozens of signatures scrawled themselves across the walls. He signed his paintings simply “Vincent” because he was afraid “Van Gogh” would be too difficult to pronounce. (“Vincent” was also a strong candidate when we named our camper van.)

Accompanied by a jazz trumpet solo, Starry Night Over the Rhone appeared, with the Big Dipper pulsating above and light creating inviting paths across the water that shimmered along the floor. Vida and I both felt seasick when we looked down at our feet. Disoriented, I had to look at the horizon, just like in real life.  

I sat down on the floor, my legs stretched out in front of me, and felt even more as if I had joined the paintings. But then I was so immersed that I couldn’t get an overview of everything else going on, so I stood up again. And later sat down again. I wasn’t the only one. A few chairs were scattered around, but many people enjoyed the floor as I did.

With his paintings surrounding and towering above, it’s much easier to examine the details of his passionate brushstrokes and strong outlines.

I loved the experience, which is different from seeing his paintings hung on walls – like being baptised with water trickled over your forehead versus full-on submersion. The immersive show is a slam dunk.

Vida and Wayne had seen what they thought was the same show in Montreal. However, they quickly realized the Ottawa show was more alive, much more animated. I later discovered that five companies are now exhibiting immersive Van Gogh shows. Why now? Why all at the same time?

“The hunger to venture into a giant animated projection of a Van Gogh painting is real, and it’s everywhere,” said Artnet.

Finally, Starry Night painted itself across the sky. His most famous painting was inspired by his window view at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence where he checked himself in after the ear incident. Stars flowed and coalesced into streams, like fireflies or bioluminescence flowing in currents, swirling, circling, like ideas in my head. It illustrated for me the creative process, which starts with a small idea, then flows and grows into something bigger – a painting, a story.

We stayed through the showing again. Each image doesn’t last long – it leaves you wanting more.

Beyond Van Gogh runs in Ottawa until Sept. 16, 7 days a week. After that, you can experience Immersive Van Gogh in Toronto until Oct. 17. (It appears to be over in Montreal.) If the Canada-U.S. border ever re-opens, you can check out various versions of the show well into 2022, including in Orlando, Boston, Detroit, Seattle, and Washington D.C. as well as in Britain’s London.

We visited Beyond Van Gogh in Ottawa on Aug. 11, 2021. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.