Call me an art snob, if you like. old school I will hold my hand. I like to see works of art in the flesh, face to face, in the scale and size that they imagine and create. No mess. I could write several thousand words about all the reasons why I think this is important – but I’ll spare you.
You can imagine, though, that it is such Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience, the world blockbuster that is, rather testing for people like me. To explain, if you are not one of the 5 million people around the world who have tried this, then it is as if you entered a large warehouse with pieces of the artist’s work drawn on the walls around, room after room, vastly blown up, with soundtracks and others. Sunflowers and irises float past, disassociated from the painting they created; cornfields wave crazily, the door of the room opens and closes, the yellow chair floats about, the artist’s red beard bristles huge and alarming. It’s all cloudy and magnified. Immersive indeed.
Of course, I understand. I know very well the desire to dive headfirst into the world of painting and wrap the magic around you like a living blanket, to feel every taste and feel, smell and taste and hear. Isn’t that what happens when you see something?
Vermeer takes us directly to the quiet and gloomy streets of Delft, to scrubbed interiors that smell of soap, from the lavender in the linen press. I could imagine the feel of the fur collar in my throat, the ironed scent of the dried lace.
Cézanne transports us to the Provençal countryside, the maquis scrunching underfoot, the exhaustion of long walks up the distant hills as the light turns purple and gold around us, and a small whiff of garlic in the wind as dinner approaches.
An Egon Schiele picture can transport us to the red-light background of Vienna, where thin and smart women scrape by, illuminated by bad jazz, sour cigarette smoke and the smell of sausages.
It’s all there. Every sense. And recently there have been some powerful immersive experiences that are not extensions/corruptions of smaller original works but created from scratch as whole experiential works, sensational pieces like those made by the Japanese collective teamLab, or experiential installations such as Antony’s filled exploratory pieces Steam Gormley “Blinding Light”.
But this is very different from the recreated “immersions” – a giant building that has a floor-to-ceiling light show of Vincent’s bodyless sunflowers floating like a balloon on the wall, surrounded by a deep blue sky and a starry night from a very different painting. , for example. Are we at a Grateful Dead gig?
I don’t know, but maybe the people who bought millions of tickets are not wrong. Londoners will decide for themselves, again, in a new place. Lightroom, which describes itself as “the home for extraordinary artist-led shows”, opened in the King’s Cross development on February 22 to have a program of works by great artists reimagined as an immersive digital event, starting with David Hockney.
It’s a smart choice. First, tackle the big question – what will the artist think? What would Monet have felt about the water lilies on all the umbrellas, and Leonardo about the “Mona Lisa” on the fridge magnet? Perhaps they don’t care, or even like it, especially if they pay the rent. Scale, as well as medium, is very important for a work of art – Van Gogh, poor, could not imagine working on a giant canvas: would he have done it, if he could? As old school as I am, I feel that an artist is always in tune with his situation, a message to the medium – but we can’t answer that question for a dead artist, or turn his sensibility into today’s reality.
David Hockney in Lightroom © Justin Sutcliffe
Hockney was different. They are here, thank you, to make decisions in the present. In the event called Bigger & closer (not smaller & farther), Giant sliding, metamorphosing Panels of landscapes and swimmers, sky and trees, which Lightroom will feature on monumental walls, with certainty. The processing and strokes of paint, the construction of colors and effects, will unfold before us, blown up to gigantic proportions. It will be 60 years of his work, described in a commentary by the artist himself, all set to a score by contemporary composer Nico Muhly.
Spectacular, yes, but coherent. In Hockney’s career, there is perfect logic. He always embraces new technologies and is quick to explore their potential in art, from unforgettable Polaroid works (perhaps the best use of this form) to experiments with perspective through the camera, pieces made with film, video, iPad, Instagram and more. This is the latest iteration, and even from a distance, we can sense the artist having fun. Perhaps even an old man like me will be won over.
Jan Dalley is the FT’s arts editor
‘Bigger & Nearer (not smaller & further away)’, 22 February-4 June, lightroom.uk
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