Vincent Van Gogh, Immersive style

In the weeks since I last posted here, I upgraded my phone to an iPhone 13 Pro. I confess that once I saw how fantastic the images were on the 13 Pro -- especially in low light -- I figured it was time. I gravitated to it, rather than consider doing any new upgrades to any of my traditional gear. 

I am finding that I'm using a whole lot more pictures with the phone, partly because of the convenience; it's always with me. And partly because of its unobtrusive nature, especially around family, who don't pull away or freeze in shyness the minute I start taking pictures as they did when I lugged around the DSLR. And the video on it is equally good and quick to engage. 

It was the iPhone that I turned to Monday when visiting the Van Gogh Immersive Experience in Raleigh, N.C. If you read through all of the informational panels and taken in all of the video attractions at the walk-through Experience, you could spend three hours there, easily. The website says it takes only 45-60 minutes, but I skipped several informational panels and still needed almost 2 hours!

Lee Ann and I were there on Monday. I read a lot of the informational panels (but not all), but I photographed most of them so I could either review or go back to the ones I missed on my own time. The panels will provide you details, for example, on his close relationship with brother Theo, his brief, sometimes contentious relationship with fellow artist Paul Gaugin, and introduce to his three sisters, which I didn't realize he had until coming upon the information panels about them.  

A lot of the Experience finds you looking at Van Gogh works or self-portraits being projected via multi-media on walls, ceilings and floors. Throughout your walk through the premises, there is an intriguing musical soundtrack playing (we ended up buying the soundtrack CD in the gift shop afterward) that includes at least one classical piece I recognized, Claude Debussy's "Reverie." 

The climax of the walk-through was the final stop, a massively long rectangular room onto whose four walls was projected a series of streaming and in-progress Van Gogh works, portraits and self-portraits. A portion of the section devoted to Van Gogh's famous sunflowers works is represented in the photo leading off the post, for example. There are many other examples below, beginning with a three-wall version of the section depicting "Almond Blossom" that we encountered when first entering the room. The corner we ended up sitting in was the back left.  

We sat in a chair in a corner and took it all in; that stop alone lasted about 20 minutes, and I video-recorded a large portion of it. You can see all my pictures and videos from the Van Gogh Immersive Experience by following the link in this sentence. 

Above and first two below: Full, medium-range and a closeup taken in the vestibule area as you enter the building. 

Above: A bust of Van Gogh, which appears early into the walk-through.

Some works from his series of sunflowers (above) and a rare self-portrait in which he is san facial hair (below).

A representation of "Wheatfields with Crows," one of his last works (above) and a montage of self-portraits (below).  

A representation of his painting "Bedroom at Arles" above, and a real-life re-creation of the painting (below).

Above and below: Some more shots from the final stop four-wall projection show. These are transition shots between his "Starry Night" (above) and "The Starry Night Over the Rhone" (below). 

Above: Also from the final stop, a large superimposition on the short wall to our left of one of the self-portraits. 

As part of the immersive experience, visitors were invited to grab a uncolored sketch of a painting and use crayons to fill in colors as they deemed appropriate. Many finished works were added to a wall displaying the results. Above, somebody's rendition of a self-portrait. Below, a rendition of the sunflowers. And second below, "Starry Night." 

Above: Umbrellas in the gift shop adorned by "Almond Blossoms." 

Above and below: Two  more self-portraits, with the one below painted not long after Van Gogh tried to cut off his right ear after a heated quarrel with Paul Gaugin. Van Gogh suffered from mental illness much of his life, which he ended up taking by mortally wounding himself with a gunshot in the abdomen in late July 1890. He died two days after the self-inflicted injury.