Worse still were the frenetic transitions of images and their alterations. It takes a very adept capitalist sleight of hand to turn his story into a lesson on “healing.” While art and colour may have brought meaning to his life, it offered little by way of solace. One is tempted here, in good digital form, to simply respond, “lol.” To speak of the healing qualities of art, nature, colour and beauty, is to miss the mark profoundly when displaying an artist whose experience of life was so unremittingly bleak that he shot himself in Auvers after placing his easel against a haystack. According to Fanny Curtat, art history consultant on the multimedia project: “There’s an interest and a curiosity for his life story that speaks to a lot of people…It also speaks to the power of his work…the healing qualities of art, of nature and the power of colours and beauty.” The experience was far worse than I feared: an upbeat (!) narration of van Gogh’s life and letters set to Muzak-inspired refrains of Don McLean’s “Vincent” and The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” an insipid fascination with his madness, followed by pat moral lessons about art as a form of therapy. And a terrible decision because when I was young, I revered van Gogh with a devotion that only a half-Dutch teenaged melancholic nascent art lover could muster. Yesterday, I made the terrible decision to attend “Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience.” Terrible because I have become increasingly tired of digital mediation, an after-effect of almost three years being chained to my desk on Zoom during the pandemic.
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