In September 2020, four months after Sydney's museums and galleries began to re-open after the COVID-19 lockdown, a very different kind of art show landed in a very different kind of venue — one better known for hosting Mardi Gras parties, the Royal Easter show and concerts: the Royal Hall of Industries.
From September to December, it was host to Van Gogh Alive: a large-scale, "multi-sensory experience" by Melbourne-based company Grande Experiences — not to be confused with the "immersive experience" Van Gogh: The Starry Night, which featured in Netflix's Emily In Paris, where the titular heroine skips the Louvre in favour of an art experience that's more social media-friendly.
Sydney was similarly seduced: almost 300,000 visitors took in Van Gogh Alive over the three months it was open.
For context, in a pre-COVID-19 world, the Art Gallery of New South Wales saw more than 225,000 visitors for its 2008-2009 exhibition Monet and the Impressionists — in the top four of its highest audience figures.
Supplied: Grande Experiences
)A follow-up show in the same format opened mid-March: Monet and Friends — Light, Life and Colour.
Where Van Gogh Alive focused on one artist's life story, Monet and Friends brings together artworks by 15 French Impressionists, including Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Sisley.
The new exhibition invites visitors to 'walk through' 19th-century London and Paris in a room filled with giant screens, lit by 40 projectors.
Monet's lilies, Degas' pointe shoes and Renoir's boat parties appear supersized, alongside quotes by the artists and complementary footage (landscapes; photographs of the artists; Parisian poster-art from the era).
Xinhua via Getty: Bai Xuefei
)The visual display is synced to a soundtrack of 'greatest hits' from the era — including Tchaikovsky's Russian Dance and Waltz of the Flowers, and Debussy's Clair de Lune.
The exhibition space is also scented.
Notes of nutmeg, cardamom and cedarwood are designed to transport you to boulevards and gardens, as the story of an art movement unfolds.
Notably absent? The paintings themselves.
A global trend
Digital experiences like Van Gogh Alive and Monet and Friends might be new to Australia, but they are a burgeoning industry, globally.
Grande Experiences, which specialises in 'immersive' exhibitions, says it has seen audiences of roughly 17 million people across 150 cities since 2006. (The company's first Australian foray was Planet Shark: Predator or Prey at Perth's WA Museum and Sydney Maritime Museum in 2019.)
Other major players include French company Culturespaces (behind the aforementioned Paris exhibition Van Gogh: The Starry Night) and Canada's Starvox Entertainment.
The trend is also making inroads to museums and galleries: in June, the institution formerly known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art (which was rebranded in 2017 as "Newfields: A Place for Nature and the Arts") will open a permanent 'multi-sensory' exhibition space called The LUME, created by Grande Experiences.
Its first show? An expanded version of Van Gogh Alive.
Grande Experiences will also be opening an Australian iteration of The LUME this year, at Melbourne Exhibition Convention Centre, having pushed back the date due to the pandemic.
Broadening the audience for art
Grande Experiences founder Bruce Peterson says the company's aim is to appeal to the "60 per cent of the population who consider themselves very occasional arts and culture goers, or non goers at all."
"We're linking all the human senses together to give an amplified outcome to the visitor," says Peterson.
Supplied: Grande Experiences
)Peterson says roughly 50 per cent of the audience for Van Gogh Alive were in the 20-35 age group.
On the opening weekend of Monet and Friends, 21-year-old student Isabella, who was among the visitors, told ABC Arts: "You don't have to be within the physical presence [of art] to appreciate it. I think understanding the process is as important as being able to look at the physical product."
Isabella said she went to the exhibition Monet: Impression Sunrise at the National Gallery of Australia in 2019. "This one's quite different, more of a virtual, immersive experience. I loved it."
Hilda, 52, who visits arts and cultural experiences only a few times a year, said the experience was calming and uplifting.
"I sensed the smell as soon as I walked in. The thing I found was that you can see all [the works] in one place," she told ABC Arts.
Supplied: Grande Experiences
)Each artwork is presented alongside supporting imagery: animated birds in flight, pools of rippling water, lily pads, footage of white cliffs and rolling waves.
Koi swim in ponds as you're reading quotes from the artists: "I will do water — beautiful blue water" (Monet), for example; and "Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret" (Pissarro).
You can sit on or walk over projections on the floor.
Peterson says he and his team intentionally design the exhibitions to be child friendly.
"Kids pick up on the moving images, the music and aroma and they have a whale of a time," he says.
"It doesn't matter that they understand who Claude Monet is, because their introduction to art and culture becomes a joyous one, an engaging one."
Julie, 44, visiting Monet and Friends with her eight-year-old daughter Ella, told us this was her first immersive digital art show. She visits traditional galleries only occasionally.
"It was a fascinating experience. I found it was better to sit in one spot and let it go around me. You can see details in ways you wouldn't ordinarily."
Why Impressionism?
It's notable that Grande Experiences' first two art-based forays into the Australian market have showcased Impressionism and one of its key inheritors, Vincent Van Gogh.
Notable, but not surprising — because these artists already have a track record of drawing large numbers of paying ticket-holders.
In 2013, the exhibition Monet's Garden, drawn from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, drew 342,788 visitors to the National Gallery of Victoria.
Van Gogh and the Seasons, NGV's 2017 'Winter Masterpieces' exhibition, drew nearly 462,000 visitors.
And Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay, in 2018, broke attendance records at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Supplied: National Gallery of Victoria/Tom Ross
)In 2021, the NGV will present not one but two Impressionism exhibitions: a survey of the Australian movement (She-Oak and Sunlight, currently on show at the Federation Square gallery) and a survey of French Impressionism, opening in June.
NGV's curator of Australian art, Dr Angela Hesson, says: "Much of our [the NGV's] responsibility is to serve people's interests, and there's no question Impressionism has an enduring appeal."
Profitable ventures
For Peterson, too, the popularity of Impressionism has been a key factor.
"We like to deal in big brands because we want to be popular. This might shock people, but we actually need to get visitors."
Unlike state-run galleries, which receive government funding, Grande Experiences is a purely commercial venture.
Artists like Van Gogh and Monet are enticing for commercial producers because their work is out of copyright, and therefore not subject to licensing fees.
Given the artworks used in Van Gogh Alive and Monet and Friends are digitally reproduced, there are expenses such as insurance and freight that other art shows would incur that Grande Experiences does not.
This also, presumably, increases the profit margin on tickets, which range from $40-$55 for an adult. (By comparison, adult tickets to the NGV's Impressionism exhibitions will be $26 and $30.)
But Peterson says his primary reason for using Impressionist-era artworks is that it's the right art for the medium: "We need lots of colour, often broad brushstrokes, music and a storyline that can tie together."
Supplied: Grande Experiences
)What about the paintings?
Will the increasing popularity of 'multi-sensory' digital art shows diminish our experience of seeing the original works in the flesh? Or perhaps even our desire to?
Hesson says familiarity and nostalgia isn't a bad thing when it comes to art.
"With a show like She-Oak and Sunlight, a lot of the works are very familiar to people. And there is a really marked difference from seeing a lot of the works in reproduction to seeing them in person."
"Many of the Impressionists' works have an extraordinary luminous quality. They have almost the effect of being backlit," she says.
At She-Oak and Sunlight, visitors will see 270 original artworks by artists including Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton.
Hesson says the Impressionists' works are particularly interesting to view in person.
"When you're looking at the actual painting you can appreciate the looseness of the brushstrokes, the fact that it is often wet paint being applied on top of wet paint, which was a really radical idea [at the time]," says the curator.
"One of the paintings – Tom Roberts' The Sunny South – has sand trapped in the paint, for example."
Seeing artworks in person, and within a collection, also helps to contextualise the art movement.
Hesson says She-Oak and Sunlight will elucidate the personal relationships between artists in Australian Impressionism.
"Coming and seeing an exhibition and looking at all the different threads that make up this term [Impressionism] gives you a much richer sense of that history, which is quite a rewarding thing as well," she says.
Generating curiosity
Hesson is optimistic about the future of traditional art exhibitions: "My feeling is that all these different forms serve each other quite well," she says.
"I think anything that generates interest in art is a positive thing, and I don't think that the experience of seeing artworks in the flesh is diminished in any way by familiarity with them, whether it's through videos or digital media. It generates curiosity."
In its blockbuster 'Winter Masterpieces' slot in June, the NGV is presenting more than 100 masterworks of French Impressionism on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Among paintings by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and others will be 79 works never previously exhibited in Australia.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
)Peterson says Grande Experiences shows "[take] you on a journey, which, honestly, you can't do in a traditional art gallery through a small collection of the art."
But he says galleries shouldn't consider his shows a threat: "[It's] whetting your appetite to go and see the originals."
Art critic John McDonald is circumspect, writing: "This may well be true but it's also conceivable that they are encouraging and exploiting the progressive decay of the public attention span and the growing need for instant experiences."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiaWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTA0LTA1L21vbmV0LWFuZC1mcmllbmRzLWdyYW5kZS1leHBlcmllbmNlcy1kaWdpdGFsLWV4aGliaXRpb25zLzEwMDAxNjA4ONIBAA?oc=5
2021-04-04 19:11:35Z
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