This was an artist whose last words to his brother were “the sadness will last forever.” The cannibalizing and commodifying of an artist such as this is one of the great achievements of late capitalism, where everything-even suffering, suicide, mental illness, and singular artistic achievement-can become a commodity.Ĭuriously scarce among the over 300 projected images were van Gogh’s depictions of peasants, prominent subjects of his early painting, to which he returned just before his death (“ Peasants Lifting Potatoes”). Van Gogh died at 37 of an infection two days after shooting himself in the chest. At the end of the exhibit lies a strategically located gift shop where you can purchase novelty socks and ties with images of the artist and his work. Because the images are all in the public domain, the multimedia companies producing the immersive experiences are able to reproduce these images again and again, charging a steep fee for a strictly timed visit that lasts a little over an hour.
Indeed, these immersive experiences of van Gogh’s work (of which there are over forty in the US) sprang up rapidly during the pandemic, bolstered by the Netflix rom-com, Emily in Paris. How curious that van Gogh branding is so commercially lucrative given the fact that he himself was destitute throughout his brief life. This “experience” is the work of artistic reproduction in the age of late capitalism par excellence. These scenes were replicated no doubt in city after city like my own, which happened to take place in a darkened room of the Royal Bank of Canada Convention Centre in Winnipeg. In turn, participants offered their own mediation of the experience: snapping selfies against the backdrop of ravens and sower, among sunflowers and starry nights, with the emaciated artist and the wounded man with a bandaged ear. This was an immersive experience in which “participants” could observe the shifting waters of canals underfoot or watch the blinking eyes of van Gogh’s self-portraits. Worse still were the frenetic transitions of images and their alterations. It takes a very adept capitalist sleight of hand to turn his story into a lesson on “healing.”
While art and colour may have brought meaning to his life, it offered little by way of solace. One is tempted here, in good digital form, to simply respond, “lol.” To speak of the healing qualities of art, nature, colour and beauty, is to miss the mark profoundly when displaying an artist whose experience of life was so unremittingly bleak that he shot himself in Auvers after placing his easel against a haystack. According to Fanny Curtat, art history consultant on the multimedia project: “There’s an interest and a curiosity for his life story that speaks to a lot of people…It also speaks to the power of his work…the healing qualities of art, of nature and the power of colours and beauty.” The experience was far worse than I feared: an upbeat (!) narration of van Gogh’s life and letters set to Muzak-inspired refrains of Don McLean’s “Vincent” and The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” an insipid fascination with his madness, followed by pat moral lessons about art as a form of therapy. And a terrible decision because when I was young, I revered van Gogh with a devotion that only a half-Dutch teenaged melancholic nascent art lover could muster. Yesterday, I made the terrible decision to attend “Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience.” Terrible because I have become increasingly tired of digital mediation, an after-effect of almost three years being chained to my desk on Zoom during the pandemic.
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