The stars blink. The raindrops create ripples in the puddles forming around your feet. The sunflowers sway. But they are all a digital illusion – Vincent van Gogh’s expressive paintings in motion, enveloping you so you become part of the scene.
Van Gogh’s masterful, dreamy work comes to life in a new digital exhibition at a fine art museum in Paris. His most famous and adored paintings have been animated and set to music so that visitors can experience the scenes as the artist did.
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Atelier des Lumières in Paris is using 140 video projectors to cover every inch of its exhibition hall, which has some walls as tall as 10 metres, to create an immersive experience which takes viewers from van Gogh’s days as a young painter to a mature artist.
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The animations reflect the mood and moment of van Gogh’s life at the time of painting and his unique style of heavy brushstrokes and the use of bold colours.
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A curated soundtrack echoes through the halls to express the ups and downs of the artist’s turbulent life.
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‘It’s to allow the visitors to really get inside the paintings, and the direction of Gianfranco Ianuzzi [the director of the exhibition] tries to highlight, all the creativity of Vincent van Gogh. That’s the power of a digital exhibition,’ explains the director of the gallery, Michael Couzigou, to Reuters.
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In the last 10 years of his life, van Gogh painted over 2 000 paintings. The most famous and well-loved of these are on exhibition for the whole of 2019. What’s more, visitors can download an app which provides commentary on each painting in detail as they go through the exhibition.
During his short life (he died at the age of 37 in 1890), Vincent van Gogh was not recognised as the influential artist he is today. He was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and died in Paris. Legend has it that he only sold one painting in his lifetime and only one article was written about him while he was alive.
‘People do not learn about culture as they did in the past. The practices are evolving and cultural offerings must be in step with them. The marriage of art and digital technology is, in my opinion, the future of the dissemination of art among future generations,’ says Bruno Monnier, the president of Culturespaces, which operates the museum.
Image: Supplied
