Van Gogh Dreams: A Journey Into His Mind
The Van Gogh Museum Explores Vincent’s Inner Life
In Van Gogh Dreams, light, colour and audio are combined to create a sensory experience based on Van Gogh’s turbulent time in Arles in the South of France. It was a period that had a major impact on Van Gogh both as an artist and as a person. Axel Rüger, Director of the Van Gogh Museum says, “Blending storytelling with aesthetics, technology and craftsmanship allows us to make Van Gogh’s passion tangible and accessible to a wide audience”.
Van Gogh Dreams, is a narrative installation that transports visitors to Van Gogh’s period in Arles between 1888-1889. Departing Paris, he headed to the town in the South of France looking to realise his dream of creating new art alive with light and colour, and establish a community of like-minded artists. The story of this turbulent period is spread across five different areas. As visitors walk through these spaces, they are told the
story based on the many letters that Vincent wrote to his brother Theo. Van Gogh Dreams immerses visitors in a poignant journey punctuated with tragic loss and extraordinary beauty.
First hand stories
The exhibition begins with Van Gogh’s departure from the frenetic city of Paris in the winter of 1887-1888. The dark and oppressive space reflects Van Gogh’s feelings when he decided to follow his dream of working together with other artists in the South to create a new type of art, full of light and colour. He noted of the period: ‘I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it’.
The promise of the South
‘The promise of the South’, a summery space featuring 900 hand-made glass sunflowers, makes Van Gogh’s inspiration and hope in Arles tangible. He wrote: ‘Under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, red patches of flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there’s something happier and more suggestive of love than in the North’. Blissfully happy in his new surroundings, Van Gogh works tirelessly towards realising his dream.
Living and working with Gauguin
Come autumn, Van Gogh welcomes his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin to the Yellow House, where the pair live and work together closely for two months. In the following area, the artistic exchange between the two artists is reflected in details from their works. Visitors also feel the tension between
the two men. Van Gogh wrote: ‘Gauguin and I talk a lot ... The discussion is excessively electric. We sometimes emerge from it with tired minds, like an electric battery after it’s run down’.
Gauguin's departure
In the run-up to Gauguin’s departure, Van Gogh suffers an episode of his illness and cuts off his ear. A disorienting space with broken mirrors confronts visitors with his confusion, disillusion and despair.
The comfort of painting
Despite everything, Van Gogh finds solace in painting, in the beauty of nature and the promise of infinity. In the final space, packed with light and colour, Van Gogh’s passion is tangible. In this space, the star-filled night sky that Van Gogh so adored is expressed by a sparkling moiré wall. In Van Gogh’s own words: ‘... In a painting I’d like to say something consoling, like a piece of music. ... To express hope through some star’.
Van Gogh Dreams relays Van Gogh’s story without using actual artworks. It therefore complements a visit to the permanent collection, where the focus is on his paintings. The Van Gogh Museum realised the installation in collaboration with Tellart, an international design agency that effortlessly blends storytelling with aesthetics, technology and craftsmanship. The Amsterdam-based glassworks Van Tetterode created 900 unique, hand-made glass flowers, inspired by Van Gogh’s worldfamous Sunflowers. The simple, abstracted scenography using light, colour and audio brings visitors extremely close to Van Gogh’s emotions.
Van Gogh Dreams returns every summer
Van Gogh Dreams is open to visitors at the Van Gogh Museum, and the installation will return for two to three months every summer.