Posted by On August 31st, 2024 m’lady and I got up really early and held a super-successful yard sale, bringing in over $300 and dispersing a pile of junk amongst dozons of happy customers, and on a gorgeous day taboot. We even had the whole shebang packed up well before our cutoff time of 2pm, and we were on the road to St. John’s not long afterwards, ahead of schedule all the way.
Our initial destination was not our primary one, for we had rolled two worth-the-drives into one single journey and we were both most excited about the latter, which was a small free super-awesome outdoor music festival called Brokest Fest that featured a band we really dig called Big Space in the headlining slot. But no more about that, for that is a whole other story.
(Other than to say: Omigawd it was fantastic and I already can’t wait for next year’s Brokest Fest!)
No, our first stop of the day was the St. John’s Convention Centre, which was hosting a travelling show called Beyond Van Gogh that I had been hearing about for some time. We had been eyeballing tickets since the St. John’s run was announced though we somehow didn’t find time to attend until just before Beyond Van Gogh packed up and moved to a new city packed with fresh fish ready to be lured out of $45 apiece.
But if you don’t go you won’t know, so I Gogh’ed.
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: I love Vincent Van Gogh. I love his art, I love his story, I love his dedication; I just love everything about the guy. I’ve read the book (Lust for Life) and seen at least two movies based on same (or maybe I saw the same movie twice). I’ve lingered at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam at least three times, but it’s Amsterdam, so it might have been four or even five times.
Suffice to say: I like the guy. The way he captures subject matter with all those thick swirls of his is nothing short of mesmerizing. Whether I’m facing one of Van Gogh’s paintings or a whole room full of them I can gape for hours and never get bored.
Frankly, it is only as I sit and write this that I wonder why I wasn’t braced to not like the Van Gogh-less Beyond Van Gogh show from the outset but I guess I hadn’t quite thought it through, because I walked into the Convention Centre expecting to be enthralled.
When the show hit Ottawa I avoided anything and everything about it because I had recently moved away from the city and I didn’t want to be jealous about not being able to see it. Then when I heard Beyond Van Gogh was coming to St. John’s (which was quite unexpected) I avoided everything about it because I knew I was going (I tend to want to be surprised by such things). That said, I couldn’t avoid seeing a few astounding visuals on popup ads (especially after I bought tickets; insidious cookies) of people standing in the middle of massive three-dimensional wraparound Van Gogh masterpieces, so I was excited to explore those magical splotches of paint in a way I never had before.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Like I say, I walked in feeling good, and the first thing I encountered after getting our tickets punched was a bar. Didn’t see that coming. I stepped up and saw that they had local microbrews available. Also didn’t see that coming. And for the third and final surprise, I decided not to get anything, afraid an afternoon IPA would make me sleepy for the drive home six hours hence.
So I shunned the bar and into the show we gogh (sorry; that’ll be the last one) where we immediately encountered panel after panel of words words and more words. The very first panel that we read posed the rhetorical question: What were we going to offer people in a Van Gogh exhibit that didn’t have any actual Van Gogh paintings? And just like that (as far as I was concerned) they tipped their hand. Somehow, some way it had never occurred to me that Beyond Van Gogh wasn’t going to include any original Van Gogh art – as obvious as that fact may be – and the realization gave me pause.
“Oh, right…”
M’lady remarked that the panels didn’t seem to be in the right order and clearly they weren’t. There was no making sense of them in any sort of cohesive way, even when we discovered that all the panels were two-sided, even when I noticed that the ones that were essentially pushed up against the walls were also two-sided. And only a few of the panels were bilingual – which the Ottawan in me found odd – and those that were were inexplicably in English and Spanish rather than French.
No matter, the panels were nothing but a brief synopsis of Lust for Life anyway, nothing new for m’lady nor I. So we followed the signs pointing down a curtained corridor and, with a deep breath, we ducked into the next room expecting to be encompassed in art.
Mmm-hmmm.
What we encountered was a 20’ x 60’ misshapen room lined with twenty or so unevenly-placed white canvas panels – each one about ten feet square – with a dozen benches scattered in the middle of the space. All the benches were full, with several people standing as well. After a few minutes m’lady and I scored a bench and settled in for the “show”.
Of course Van Gogh masterpieces were being projected onto the screens, and when we looked close enough we could see that the images did indeed continue onto the floor, but as for standing in the middle of those beautiful all-encompassing Van Gogh environments as seen in the facebook ads? Well, let’s just say we got Sea Monkeyed.
First of all, the images were always and exclusively computer-modulated combinations of Van Gogh paintings. Like, blending together a bunch of his self-portraits (of which there are many) or a bunch of his sunflower paintings (again: there are many). But worse, the projections were enhanced. Yes, enhanced. The colours morphed, the flowers swayed in the wind, the stars glinted, and (worst of all) the self-portraits blinked. Blasphemy after blasphemy, all of it grotesquely larger-than-life, and none of it in high-definition.
That last point shocked me. I figured at least everything would be in high-def, but nope, it was basically the same quality you’d get from a grade school overhead projector.
To enhance the experience, throughout the fifty-minute reel instrumental renditions of popular songs by the likes of Simon & Garfunkel and Stevie Wonder played all quiet and Muzak-like in the background.
When the loop was done we got up and walked slowly around the room. I got close to the walls and tried really hard to appreciate Van Gogh’s hyper-enlarged brushwork up close and I’ll admit that I did a little bit, but only a little, and only when I forced myself. After a lingering circle around the room we followed more arrowed signs and were only half-surprised when they led us straight to the gift shop. Yep, that was the whole thing.
I will admit that it took almost everything I had to not shell out $32 for a tie-dye t-shirt featuring Van Gogh’s smoking skull that was a clear Grateful Dead knockoff, only it said “Vincent Van Gogh” in place of “Grateful Dead”. I somehow managed to resist – I have a lot of t-shirts already – but I still regret not buying it.
I must also admit that while we were inside I wasn’t hating on the whole thing quite as much as I’m letting on here, but I was definitely acutely underwhelmed at the very least. But the biggest kick in the jowls came as we walked out the door and took a glance at our ticket printout. I had forgotten that it cost us almost $45 each to see that. Ouch.
(Frankly, if it had cost $8 to get in I would probably be telling people they should check it out.)
I asked m’lady if she thought Van Gogh would have liked Beyond Van Gogh and she figured that he would have enjoyed seeing his art being so appreciated. And while that is certainly true, I tend to think that angry Vincent might have surfaced and raged about the egregious alterations, especially with regards to colour. Dude was a monster about colour.
One thing we agreed on though: Van Gogh wouldn’t have been able to afford a ticket.
We also agreed on the quarter-chicken dinner at Swiss Chalet – which we both ordered with extra sauce – and that Brokest Fest is great.
Todd Man Out 