Sunflowers and starry nights - sampling Beyond Van Gogh
An artistic Arena takeover
Venturing into the darkness mid-morning on a typical English summer’s day – which is to say blisteringly hot under a merciless sun – comes as something of a relief, even if the air’s not moving much.
I’ve come to get a first glimpse of Beyond Van Gogh, which as Monty Python would have said, is “something completely different” – at least for Utilita Arena Newcastle, normal stamping ground of rockers, rappers, pop divas and the like.
Although Anna Parry, business development director at international entertainment company Annerin Productions, will tell me: “I always say Van Gogh was the biggest rock star.”
The Dutch painter certainly has posthumous rock star appeal, even if few people took him or his art seriously during his relatively short life.
He sold none of his pictures but painted, in the periods when not wracked with depression, like a man possessed.
Once, as you’ll see in one of the projected quotations that appear and then fade, he wrote: “Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance… I’m going like a painting locomotive.”
Ultimately the locomotive was stopped in its tracks by the man himself. Van Gogh died of self-imposed gunshot wounds on July 29, 1890, aged just 37.
Annerin Productions is a Canadian company that was set up by Anna’s father some 40 years ago, specialising in music shows.
Covid, it seems, was key to this change of direction.
“I’d like to think we were the first to think of anything like this but the idea of immersive shows has been around for over 20 years and, to be honest, it was during the pandemic that we had to think about how we could carry on doing what we do,” Anna tells me.
“My father and his partners have a passion for art and we have worked with an amazing creative team from Normal Studio in Montreal.
“We’d worked with them on music shows but they’re huge art fanatics. We came together and went on to build something that we could take on tour. It took about a year to build.”
Beyond Van Gogh debuted in Canada and has since been seen in some 50 cities across North America. It has also been seen in South America and, says Anna: “We’ve just closed an exhibit in Egypt.”
The show was first seen in this country three years ago, in Liverpool, and proved so popular that it returned, alternating with Annerin Productions’ other immersive show, dedicated to Monet.
It has also been to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Exeter and Birmingham, and is due to go to Nottingham.
Anna says she approached Utilita Arena Newcastle early this year.
If it’s a first for the Newcastle music venue, it’s also a first for Beyond Van Gogh, at least in this country where it has been seen previously only in exhibition centres.
“The North East was always on our list,” says Anna.
“I think there’s a big arts and culture hub here. Also the friendliness of people has been amazing here. This has all happened in quite a short time space.”
Anna, incidentally, pronounces Van Gogh the North American way, as ‘Van Go’, rather than what I’d take to be the British way, ‘Van Goff’ - or, perhaps more properly, with ‘Goff’ uttered as a kind of throat-clearing stutter which has no written expression in English.
None of this matters. Starry nights and sunflowers have an appeal which crosses any linguistic divide – and this show or ‘experience’ or whatever you want to call it is likely to stir the emotions of all-comers.
You enter via a dark labyrinth past information boards which tell the story of the man and his art. Then you venture by turn into the Waterfall Room and the Immersive Room and finally the Reflection Room.
In the large Immersive Room Van Gogh’s most famous works appear on the walls and across the carpeted floor, and then give way to others. It’s like a giant 360 degree slide show with paintings alternating occasionally with snippets from the artist’s copious letters.
There is, oddly when you consider his troubled life, a soothing quality to Van Gogh’s most popular works. It’s in the colours, the curves and the often mundane but timeless subject matter.
Some people will be signing up to do yoga amid these projected paintings and if you’ve got to adopt the lotus position, where better to do it?
In the Reflections Room you’ll see sunflowers, not projected but sculptural, reminiscent a little of TV props for The Magic Roundabout or Teletubbies or suchlike. Classy, though.
Gilt frames are suspended before them but I doubt many people will need the hint that here lies a fantastic photo opportunity. Social media, in the coming days, is going to be awash with people posing under blooming sunflowers.
That is my confident prediction.
In this room there are also little easels set up for those who feel the artistic urge and don’t feel shy about parading their talents beneath the ghostly eye of a master.
And then, finally, there’s the gift shop.
Of course there is!
Having had an over-abundance of suspect ‘merch’ thrust at me over the decades, I admit there’s something undeniably covetable about a Van Gogh hat or a Van Gogh sweatshirt (though perhaps not on a day like today) or even a Van Gogh mug.
How sadly ironic – a lot of ironies swirl around this show – that Vincent Van Gogh himself never lived to buy so much as a half decent pair of shoes with the proceeds of his labour.
If this goes well, Anna Parry says, there is a good chance Beyond Van Gogh will be back. And perhaps we’ll also get the Monet show next time.
Beyond Van Gogh is at Utilita Arena Newcastle from Saturday, July 11 to August 9 with a range of time slots available.