2023-05-21 07:00:00
These exhibition spaces have been flourishing for ten years. The French company Culturespaces will open its 10th branch in Hamburg next year. But these digital devices are contested by some specialists in the art world.
Little known during his lifetime, would Vincent Van Gogh be too well known from now on? The Dutch painter, author of the mythical Starry Night or some Sunflowersunleashed in any case all the passions in the middle of the culture these last years, to observe the multiplication of the digital installations which are devoted to him since 2008.
Imagine Van Gogh: the immersive exhibition, Imagine Van Gogh exhibit, Van Gogh: the immersive experience, Van Gogh alive, or Beyond Van Gogh are all part of the (long) list of “immersive” exhibitions that have recently popped up all over the world, with the promise of immersing the viewer in the master’s painting.
The enthusiasm is such that in New York in March 2021, the Better Business Bureau – a North American consumer aid organization – was alerted to the confusion that the proliferation of digital exhibitions dedicated to the artist, sometimes sharing a very similar name, could create for consumers.
“I feel like I’m in the picture”
Each time, the curation is the same: a large room is plunged into darkness, and its walls covered with paintings by Van Gogh projected using powerful video projectors. Sometimes the paintings come to life before your eyes: the sunflowers spin, and the stars twinkle.
The practice has even been dubbed by the series Emily in Paris. In the first season, the heroine embodied by Emily Collins marvels at the projected work of Vincent Van Gogh, as she visits the Atelier des Lumières, a place dedicated to digital art in Paris. “It’s incredible, I feel like I’m in the picture”, we hear ecstatic.
But does going to an exhibition dedicated to an artist’s paintings, without seeing any, make sense? In the world of culture, the artistic interest or not of such exhibitions is debated.
“A kind of betrayal”
“What I have retained for the moment, with the animation of the tables, is a great misunderstanding”, cowardly to BFMTV.com Wourt Van Der Veen, scientific adviser of l’Institut Van Gogh. Images are pumped from Wikipedia and then projected without purpose.
“There is no curation work, we do not explain the artist’s gesture, and we add music”, denounces this specialist in Vincent Van Gogh, to whom he has devoted a thesis. “It’s a bit like the Throne Fair.”
Proponents of a traditional exhibition of works fear that faced with a digital projection, it will be impossible to notice the texture of the paintings, or the movement that can inhabit the brushstrokes.
“When you take two minutes to watch The starry Nightyou can live 100 trips”, continues Wouter van der Veen.
Then to indicate: “There is a kind of betrayal in these exhibitions. We tend to take people for idiots. (…) It is not going in the right direction. It is the emotion of the show , not the spectacle of emotion.”
A major financial windfall
But faced with the lure of the immersive, hard to resist. Culturespaces, the company behind the Atelier des Lumières, is a French flagship in this area. It first opened a first location in the heart of the capital in 2018, rehabilitating a former foundry. Since then, the SME has continued to gain momentum, with 70 million in turnover, as reported last September by the daily The echoes.
The entrance fee to these exhibitions illustrates the economic interest they constitute. For the Atelier des Lumières, it takes 16 euros at full price for an entry ticket, one euro less than the Louvre. Across the Atlantic, the exhibition Imagine Van Gogh, the immersive exhibition is currently offered at 32.77 dollars, more expensive than the very famous and provided Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Projecting works by Vincent Van Gogh is quite easy, despite the artist’s fame. “Van Gogh’s work is in the public domain, and the various actors who manage his legacy are very generous. It was Van Gogh’s wish, moreover, that his work be shared with as many people as possible”, notes Wouter van der Veen.
Culturespaces is now extending its influence throughout the world, by multiplying the artists on offer, as well as the exhibition venues. In France first, as in Bordeaux, but also in Seoul or Amsterdam. Latest project? The opening last September of a new exhibition space in the heart of New York, 3,000 m2 in size. Cost of the operation: 22 million dollars.
The company did not respond to requests from BFMTV.com. But with our colleagues from echoesBruno Monnier, President of Culturespaces, was delighted with this success, especially since for a long time, “public cultural actors have denigrated our digital exhibitions; today, everyone is going digital, such as the RMN-Grand Palais” .
“Show the dynamics of the works”
Roei Amit precisely directs the Immersive Grand Palais located in an annex of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the digital counterpart of the Grand Palais currently closed for renovations. The place offers until November 5 an immersive exhibition dedicated to the Czech artist Alfons Mucha.
Asked about the criticisms leveled at the immersive, this digital specialist defends the work of his teams. “For this exhibition, we worked with the Mucha foundation, as well as a curator specializing in the artist”, he underlines to BFMTV.com.
More generally, Roei Amit notes the contributions of digital technology to the art world: “We are not looking to simply make another type of reproduction, but we want to show the dynamics of the works. For example, with Mucha, his curves, which are at the heart of his creation.”
Talk to young people
An observation shared by Gianfranco Iannuzzi, who set up most of the exhibitions offered by the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, including the current one, dedicated to Marc Chagall. A trained sociologist and photographer, he came to immersive art by looking for a new way to exhibit his prints.
“Immersive art can speak a lot to younger generations, it sparks more vivid memories, while helping to raise awareness of art in wider audiences,” he says.
For him, it is futile to put museums and immersive exhibition spaces, original work and digital reproduction in competition. “The museum has its role, people have to keep going there. Immersive art can never replace the original work. It’s actually interdependent. Either we deny any reproduction, or we accept that we can show it,” he continues.
Wouter van der Veen is skeptical about the supposed democratization that these exhibitions bring: “Immersive art has a positive aspect, because it can constitute a first contact with an artist. But it can also have a perverse effect. When people go to the museum and realize that The sunflowers of Van Gogh do not spin, and that museums can look like temples, this can divert them forever from more classic exhibition spaces.”
A continuation of the artist’s work?
What if, in reality, the rise of these exhibitions was not simply a response to new public expectations? At least that’s what Daniel Bougnoux thinks, philosopher and retired professor from the University of Grenoble, author of the essay The crisis of representation (ed. La Découverte).
“In democracy as in art, representation is no longer enough for us, we demand participation,” he explains to BFMTV.com.
Then to continue: “That astute image computer scientists, helped by very powerful machines, seize a painting by Van Gogh or Monet to make it a promenade, a massage parlor or an invitation to the bath, does not seem to me in any way sacrilegious, but conforms somewhere to the genius of these painters.”
The philosopher even believes “that no work is untouchable”. “This is how a poem can become an excellent song, a book can beget a film”, he continues.
Wouter Van der Veen does not completely close the door to digital. “Me, what I prefer is to use it to go to the work. We could use 100m2 so that people who are not always familiar with an artist are stimulated, so that it creates an appetite”, he believes.
The debate in the art world is therefore open. In the meantime, Culturespaces continues to expand. In February, the Phoenix of Lights opened in Dortmund, Germany. In 2024, the Port of Lights will open in Hamburg, bringing the number of exhibition venues managed by the company to 10. In the program? Van Gogh, of course.
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