IT’S A VINCENT VAN BY NATASHA BOYD
Doubtless you’ve seen the billboards: the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit has shown in cities across North America, and now it’s Los Angeles’ turn. It’s Time To Gogh! commands the sign, and I oblige, stepping into the old Amoeba building on Sunset Boulevard, which will serve as the event space for the duration of its local run. I pass through security and walk into the dark hallway that begins the “immersive experience.” Overhead, a voice actor murmurs lines from Vincent Van Gogh’s letters. This hallway opens onto a tunnel of empty gilt frames that ends at the main foyer, which has a mural of the Hollywood sign painted in the manner of Van Gogh. The voice actor is replaced by classical strings covers of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games.” FIND BEAUTY EVERYWHERE is scrawled on one of the promotional leaflets. The foyer serves as another hallway, and I follow the crowd to the projection rooms. With the lights on, it would be like standing inside an enormous blank cube. Now, however, the darkness is broken by projections of Van Gogh’s paintings. Heavy bass electronica thrums through the air, while farmland and flowers
54
flow across the walls as if they painted themselves. The animated autonomy of Van Gogh’s works seems strangely fitting. The first time I remember seeing a Van Gogh, I was an elementary school tot. My teacher wheeled out the projector and cast Starry Night onto the wall. I can still feel the nubby carpet under my hands when I remember this, how it is like the texture of the paint. It seems strange that a painter who found God in the world would have his work transformed once again into that least material of mediums—into light. It’s impossible to know the first time most people saw his vision of the night sky over Saint Remy, though almost certainly it wasn’t the painting in New York City, hanging on MoMA’s 5th floor. Most likely it was a replication of the image on a poster, a phone case, fridge magnets, backpack or bed sheets, and now this “immersive experience.” Van Gogh reportedly painted many of his works through windows; the replications are now like thousands of miniature windows on his actual paintings, wherever they may really be housed.
