Can walking through Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting be the first pandemic-created attraction to flourish once the lockdown eases?
The Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit hits Los Angeles on May 27 at a high-visibility location said to be the site of the old Amoeba Records on Sunset Blvd., although nothing has been announced yet. The show debuted in Paris, where it was seen by more than 2 million visitors, then opened in Toronto last July to steady attendance, despite the pandemic, with Ticketmaster noting it as its top-selling event for the summer. The lead character in Netflix’s Emily in Paris is shown visiting the original exhibit in Paris, further fueling the phenomenon.
A multisensory experience combining 500,000 cubic feet of projection, 60,600 frames of video, 90 million pixels and music, Immersive Van Gogh’s Toronto run was promoted as “It’s Safe to Gogh,” with socially distant audiences walking through the installation at appointed times during the day. The exhibit subsequently opened in Chicago, in February and San Francisco in March, with the initial, sold-out engagement in those cities and Los Angeles extended through September in all three cities.
Viewers are required to wear face masks and take temperature checks, with touchless ticket-taking and social distance space marked in lights.
Some of Van Gogh’s most iconic works, including The Potato Eaters, Starry Night, Sunflowers and The Bedroom, are brought to life by creator Massimiliano Siccardi, with a soundtrack by Luca Longobardi, both pioneers of immersive digital art experiences in France.
The show’s producers include Lighthouse Immersive – who brought in Siccardi -- Toronto-based Starvox Exhibits and Showone Productions as well as next-generation exhibit incubator Impact Museums, co-founded by Diana Rayzman, also a principal in RGLive Events, a national event marketing organization servicing Fortune 500 companies.
L.A. tickets are priced from $29.99 for those under 16 to VIP access for $99 with flex ticketing based on peak times, an initial run already selling out. The hour-long show turns over several times a day.
The reviews have been generally positive. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tony Bravo opined, “Beautiful, moving and just a little too much. Good. After a year without big, splashy art happenings, this is a huge, indulgent way to dive back in. It may not be for everyone, but experiences like this are going to be a way we engage with art in the future.”
The show has also inspired talk of it being a cannabis-inspired “head trip,” as Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson noted, “The entirety of the rooms pulses with imagery, a light-and-video artist’s rendering of Van Gogh’s thick paint daubs, his fuzzy distant stars and exuberant, hopeful sunflowers, as a kind of living wallpaper. Cicadas buzz, water ripples, and backing songs by the likes of Edith Piaf and Thom Yorke lend it a certain emotional resonance.”
There is already talk of similar “immersive” projects for other artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gustav Klimt, David Hockney or Jackson Pollock and even one devoted to classic rock photography.