Flowing van Gogh brings live art back
Tech sorcery creates colorful spectacle — and glimpse of hope
At one of the grayest intersections of asphalt and concrete in San Francisco, a touch of the French countryside is bringing a burst of color.
Outside the SVN West event venue where Van Ness Avenue meets Market Street, artist Jeff Carnie adds the finishing details to a mural on the building that a few years ago housed a car dealership. In the style of postImpressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, Carnie makes swirling brushstrokes on his take on the painter’s “Starry Night,” inserting the artist’s selfportraits against San Francisco landmarks like the Palace of Fine Arts and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Inside will be “Immersive van Gogh,” a digitally projected traveling attraction by Lighthouse Immersive that computeranimates the art of the Dutch painter in a surroundscape experience. The projections, which move and transition into new paintings like “Les Mangeurs de pommes de terre” (“The Potato Eaters,” 1885), “Les Tournesols” (“Sunflowers,” 1888) and “La Chambre à coucher” (“The Bedroom,” 1889), mash together van Gogh’s artistic themes set to 38 minutes of electronic and instrumental music by composer Luca Longobardi.
The attraction rapidly sold out its first weeks when announced in December, even with uncertainty about whether pandemic restrictions on gatherings would allow it to open. San Francisco is now in the red tier on the state’s COVID safety rating system, which allows museums and theaters to open with capacity limits. On Thursday, March 18, opening day, a new block of tickets ($24.99$39.99) for dates through Sept. 6 will be released.
The experience originated in Toronto but is popping up all over American cities including Chicago, with plans to open additional venues, including in Los Angeles and Atlanta.
The attraction’s stay has already been extended once in San Francisco. For many of these cities, “Immersive van Gogh” will be one of the first major events in their reopenings. After a year of pandemic shutdowns, the hunger for art and experiences is evidenced by museums’ swiftly maxing out at 25% capacity and by the demand for “Immersive van Gogh” tickets.
“The van Gogh theme is truly crosscutting, and anyone who loves art knows how to recognize the great expressive force in Vincent’s work,” says Massimiliano Siccardi, the artistic director of “Immersive van Gogh.” “We have been locked indoors for about a year . ... Going to an immersive experience after these times of ‘confinement’ is certainly a great driving force and stimulus for everyone.”
When the building served as Bill Graham’s Fillmore West ballroom from 1968 to 1971, light shows were frequently projected behind rock bands, the perfect enhancement for a psychedelic experience. In contrast to the oil and food coloring used in the ’60s, “Immersive van Gogh” uses 40 projectors hidden in the beams of the ballroom ceiling and 40 computer servers, projecting 56,000 frames from 400 images. The projections not only cover the entirety of the room’s walls (totaling 500,000 cubic feet of projections), they also extend onto the floor, where sunflowers and social distance circles combine into an artful pattern. As with any event or venue in San Francisco in 2021, capacity restrictions, hand sanitation stations and other pandemic protocols will be observed.
“We’re thrilled by the reception in the Bay Area,” says coproducer Svetlana Dvoretsky. “We opened our first location in Toronto in the middle of the pandemic. We had no idea what to do; we’d been operating blind like everyone else. We know that coming and being the first, or one of the first, art events that open
in this area, we take a lot of responsibility in creating a supersafe environment. We also know how much the art lover is starved, how much we all need this.”
A week from opening, the space was still being built out for audiences. On the firstfloor entry, a fabric sunflower curtain gives you your first selfie opportunity, and after moving up steps painted with irises and sunflowers, you’ll emerge in the upstairs lobby with its installation of hanging paintbrushes. A darkened fabric tunnel helps your eyes transition to the main space while keeping outside light from interfering with projections.
In the ballroom where Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead once jammed, production manager Branden Charlton led a brief preview of the 38 minutes of projections. In addition to the social distancing circles projected on the floor, a mirrored onestory platform is centered in the room, allowing guests to take in the experience from a higher vantage point.
As the water in “Starry Night” began to ripple in one image, selfportraits of the artist began to float into view. The sky twinkled and stars morphed into visions of flames, which began to resemble flowers.
“This is one person’s interpretation of what van Gogh brought to us through his paintings,” Charlton says. “The building itself has challenges and rewards; even the architecture itself is something we want to complement. It’s part of the show.”