‘Van Gogh Alive’ – The Immersive Experience, Currently showing in Kensington Gardens

A few weeks ago, Ellie & I visited “Van Gogh Alive” in Kensington Gardens, just opposite the Royal Albert Hall. It will be showing in this location until 26 September.

Bester, bigger, morer… oh well

Over the past ten years, the show has been seen by over seven million visitors in 65 cities. This makes it the most visited immersive experience in the world. A lot of our friends had told us that they had booked tickets. Some of them had already seen the show somewhere on the planet and were full of praise. In short, especially with immersive experiences being the order of the day, it simply could not be avoided.

 

Two immersive Van Gogh experiences in London at the same time

This show should not be confused with another Van Gogh Immersive Experience called not “Van Gogh Alive” but “Van Gogh – The Immersive Experience” and located not in West but in East London. It will start in July and we’ll probably review that one too. The specific experience is much smaller in scale so far than this one. However, the organisers have done many other events and overall their shows have been seen over six million times in cities largely around Europe, as well as Brazil and China.

 

Easy to get to

Getting to the large marquee of “Van Gogh Alive” was just a short stroll through Hyde Park for us. That said, the location should be quite convenient for anyone in London or anyone coming to London. It is very central and close to several tube stations, the closest being South Kensington.

Covid-safe

We had both been a tad concerned that – with Covid numbers shooting up left, right, and centre, we would be going inside a tent with no windows and rub shoulders with people in a dark room on one of the hottest days of the year to date. Luckily, all our worries turned out to be unfounded. They take Covid measures very seriously at this venue.

 

No queues, no crowds, good ventilation

There were no queues when we arrived. Everything is timed, visitor numbers are limited, and everyone is requested to show up at the assigned time. Inside the marquee, the crowds were spread thin too and there are plenty of wardens who make sure that no one is being inconsiderate. I can’t be entirely sure if there was proper air conditioning, I think it was, but in any case the ventilation worked very well.

 

Learning about van Gogh and the immersive experience ahead

In the first room you learn about van Gogh, his life, his art. You are given an introduction to the immersive experience in which you are about to dive into. Explanatory notes on the walls next to large-scale photos of the artist’s works explain how and why the curators have split van Gogh’s life into six separate periods. You learn how the experience is going to be immersive, it’s not just audiovisual. The notes explain the symbolism and main themes, and how they have changed from period to period. How the state of mind of the great man has changed over time.

 

What’s your poison?

Nearly everyone who knows a little bit about Western art knows about the ear, but boy oh boy… This dude didn’t stop there. He drank all kinds of poison, including vast amounts of toxic paint and alcohol, he spent quite a long time in sanatoriums, lost friends because of his madness, suffered from severe depression. In the end he is believed to have shot himself. It took a few days for him to die after that. Not entirely a glass-half-full, cheerful, chirpy, happy-go-lucky party animal, this feller.

The artist started out as rational, level-headed guy

From this exhibition, but much more so from a previous exhibition at the National Gallery a few years ago, we know how he became an artist relatively late in his life. We know how he initially, well into his thirties, had had a very rational, level-headed, almost scientific approach to life and art.

We are going to immerse in THIS ?!

What kind of immersive experience was ahead of us? Were we going to descend into madness with Vincent? How many ears precisely were we going to end up with?

Enter at will

We entered the main space where the show takes place after about one third or 15 minutes of the roughly 45-minute long experience had been shown. That stretch showing at the time happened to largely consist of various of van Gogh’s paintings of that period being projected onto the tall walls that split this part of the marquee into sections. At first we were slightly disappointed that the experience seemed like not much more than a sophisticated slide show. There was classical music playing.

Steam trains rolling through canvas on screen

Then, about five minutes in, the mode changed. Suddenly there was much more movement. Instead of static paintings the paintings started to move. A steam train depicted on one of the paintings was moving over the wall, pushing out steam and making noise. Some paintings started to form shape right in front of you, as if the artist were making strokes with his brush in real time.

Not just paintings

Some walls showed scenes from the local market, the streets, the sanatorium, the landscapes van Gogh was surrounded by. One of the best bits is where the influence of Japanese art is shown with elements of Far Eastern drawings and paintings coming alive on the various screens in the room. Sometimes some of the screens showed quotes from the big man.

Another highlight for us was when the night sky gradually built up around us and turned into one of van Gogh’s paintings. The river at night and the sunflower sequences were amazing too.

Why not more adventurous?

We stayed until we had seen the first third of the show, the one we had initially missed. Overall, Ellie & I enjoyed the whole experience. Was it immersive? Not all of it, but certainly more than half of it is visually immersive and the music was chosen very well. We would probably have been even more impressed, if the show would have been more adventurous.

Multi-sensory = audiovisual, very much like… urm… a movie

Why not add some actual physical objects aside from the walls, like a few pieces of furniture, tubes of paint, turpentine, brushes, a palette and an easel. That might even add a couple of olfactory notes. Why not make some of those objects move. Why not use holograms, special effects, AR/VR, lasers, actors. Even 3D has been popular since the 1950s. Van Gogh Alive uses very minimal light effects, usually just a bright limelight that grew stronger in order to signify the rising sun or similar. Why limit the acoustics largely to classical music. Why have such a narrow visual focus of 95% on the paintings. Yes, the paintings should be in the centre of an immersive experience about a painter, but a little less would have been more.

As someone who likes haunted houses…

I don’t even see why it all has to take place in one large single room. Moving from one room to another and so on would have provided a lot more options to add thrills. I see how most people would not be eager to join the rollercoaster of van Gogh’s life too closely, but a bit closer would have been more fun. There is actually one scene very close to the end of the show where you see depressing scenes on the screens and then you hear a shot. I could see half the audience wince. I would’ve liked to see more of that. Then again, I probably like haunted house rides and rollercoasters more than the next guy, so no hard feelings.

Sunflower field and drawing class

You leave the main space through a small room with artificial sunflowers and mirrors that provides ample opportunity for the obligatory selfies and Instagram pics. Then you get the option of taking part in a brief twenty-minute drawing lesson (you get to keep your art). There is a large café with outdoor and indoor seating that offers views of the Royal Albert Hall and the Memorial.

We had had a fun evening. 3.75 out of 5 in our book. £24 (weekday) to £29 (weekend) sounds like a reasonably fair price to us, considering that some cinemas around Leicester Square now charge in excess of £20 just to see a movie. The other van Gogh experience, the one in East London, costs £24.90.

Looking for more artsy-fartsy stuff? Feel welcome to check out our posts about an immersive Leonardo experience at the National Gallery, ‘Other Spaces’ & Transformer at 180 The Strand, JR: Chronicles at Saatchi Gallery, and Ai Weiwei’s Roots exhibition at the Lisson Gallery.

We’ve also blogged about other fun things to do, like punting in Cambridge, rowing Venetian-style in Venice, riding a rubber boat near the North Pole (Spitsbergen), canyoning and rock-climbing near Porto, and that time I jumped out of a plane mid-air near Peterborough. Hope to see you again here, soon.