Starry nights to selfie nights: Instagram generation discovers Van Gogh through India's first immersive art show

Across the world, immersive art experiences have been sprouting like sunflowers. From Frida Kahlo to Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet to Vincent van Gogh, almost every famous artist has been given the ‘immersive’ treatment. But it’s the Dutch post-impressionist who was not only the subject of the very first such show in 2001 but also inspired the most versions, one of them even featuring in the Netflix hit ‘Emily in Paris’. Incidentally, van Gogh made 11 sunflower paintings so perhaps he wouldn’t really be turning in his French grave to see his art being turned into trendy shows for the Instagram generation.

For Indians, it’s still a novel experience, and a crowd thronged Gurgaon’s DLF Cyber City where Van Gogh 360 opened on Monday morning. One escapes from the blinding sun outside into a dark theatre where giant projection screens let you see the master’s work in a new light. Instead of a static (and what some would call boring) picture, viewers are submerged by his sun-filled landscapes and starry galaxies that whirl around, cascade down the walls and the floor and draw you into the picture.

More than 300 images are projected, including many of his most famous paintings, including The Starry Night, The Starry Night Over the Rhône, The Potato Eaters, Wheatfield with Crows, and several self-portraits, with animated elements making you feel as though you’re inside the painter’s reality.

It’s quite different from the gallery experience that we now know so well – pristine white spaces, respectful silences occasionally broken by hushed discussions about the “deep” meanings of the work aimed at showing off one’s art knowledge and “taste”. This, however, changes the default way art is shown. Youngsters wander through in groups, older folk sit on beanbags – everyone with their phones out, snapping away. The show is on a loop that’s about 45 minutes long, but visitors can linger. Some even lie down to let the art wash over them.

One of the many visitors was Manta Sidhu, a music teacher at Shiv Nadar school. “As a youngster, I got introduced to Van Gogh through Don McLean’s song Starry, Starry Night (Vincent is the original title) and both the song and painting now have a special place in my heart,” says Sidhu, who had initially planned to fly to Mumbai where the first Van Gogh 360 experience was staged but changed her mind when she heard it would be coming to NCR.

But is she happy to see van Gogh on screens? “A few people asked me why I was going to see these projections as I could just as well see the images online. But art is not about pulling up images on a computer, it’s about curation and experience.”

It’s easy to be critical about how such events turn masterpieces of art into “content” ready to be shared on social media, just another visual distraction alongside dance and dog videos. But as Kunal Khambhati, head, Live events & IP at BookMyShow which tied up with a Canadian company and brought the experience to India, points out, “If we were to bring van Gogh’s original paintings and show them here, we would probably get less people. This allows us to introduce this famous painter to a different younger audience that’s inquisitive and curious. And most importantly, the show speaks their language – which is audio visual.”

Not everyone agreed. Aditya Kapoor, a filmmaker, felt this was nothing like the real museum experience and recommended that people watch the animated film ‘Loving Vincent to understand the mind of the troubled painter who cut off his ear after a reported tiff with fellow painter Paul Gaugin.

The ‘education room’ at Van Gogh 360 does attempt to educate viewers about the life of the painter – his many failed careers, the strong bond with his brother Theo, how a medication he was given for epileptic seizures might have changed his colour perception and been the cause of his Yellow Period, and how his severe mental health problems resulted in him eventually shooting himself.

While informative, it can probably not compare to a museum experience where one can admire van Gogh’s mastery of impasto —the thick application of paint that gave his much-loved Starry Night paintings that thickly textured look. A close look at the canvas reveals how van Gogh’s nocturnal sky isn’t black but a deep rich purple. Compare this to ‘Terrace of a Café at Night’ where the warm orange-yellow glow of the gaslight on the terrace contrasts with the deep blue of the night sky.

On these wall-size screens, the effects are created by motion: dancing brush strokes, blooming sunflowers, flapping crows. But it’s enough to have brought Snigdha Patnaik, a professor who recently stopped working full-time, to watch the show for the second time. “I saw it in Mumbai and loved it. So, I have come again, and brought my husband along. It's a beautiful way to get people interested in art.”