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Yellow was his favourite colour, the hue of sunshine, a hallmark of his immense body of work in the last years of his tragically short life.

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Innovative Van Gogh exhibit opening in London brings his works to life Back to video

In 19th century Europe, Vincent Van Gogh was infamously miserable and destitute, and according to historians, failed at every endeavour until he painted his first canvas at the age of 27.

Here he found a way to see the world more beautifully than most can imagine. And in his last two years, living in Provence in the south of France – institutionalized for part of it – Van Gogh created more than 2,000 pieces before carrying his stool and easel out into a golden field of haystacks and ending his life without ever knowing the unequalled fame his name has carried since.

An exhibit of unprecedented scale will present 200 of his most well-known pieces created between 1888 and 1890, projectors magnifying every brush stroke and colour Van Gogh used to communicate the emotion and beauty around him.

Imagine Van Gogh will present these paintings free from frames, enlarged and in motion on massive screens, around corners and across floors of 100 Kellogg.

Opening Saturday and continuing until Jan. 8, the first two days already are sold out after the sale of more than 23,000 advance tickets.

Imagine Van Gogh “is changing the way that London and Southwestern Ontario will experience the way they view art,” said D.J. Williams of Jetset Event Management.

“While the exhibit holds no physical or historical copies of Van Gogh’s original work, it brings Van Gogh’s work to life in a vivid, spectacular way where visitors will be literally transported on a journey to the heart of the artist’s work. Visitors literally enter the artist’s world of dreams and experience their energy, emotion and beauty.”

There’s one person in particular who won’t be able to attend the nomadic installation that will be shown in four Canadian cities, and in her words, she’s “pissed off.”

“This is my Mona Lisa,” said Annabelle Mauger, from her living room in Provence, not far from where Van Gogh lived out his final days. “Leonardo da Vinci worked on Mona Lisa all his life and that’s what I’m doing.”

Behind her on the wall is a poster of a Van Gogh self-portrait beneath Cathedrale D’Images, a promotional souvenir from the inaugural installation of Imagine Van Gogh in 2008. Unlike the massive screens showing these images around the world now, this first exhibit was staged in Cathedrale D’Image, an abandoned quarry turned open-air gallery where Van Gogh’s work illuminated smooth stone walls and captured the imaginations of local residents.

While she earned a master’s degree leading to work as an editor of art books, the experience that made Mauger an ideal fit for the role of artistic director began as a little girl playing shadow games behind the screen in her grandfather’s cinema.

And it was her partner, Timothee Polad, who connected her to Cathedrale D’Images. His grandfather, Albert Plecy, bought the historic site and launched Image Totale, the first immersive audiovisual installation of its kind, in 1977. In 2000, as Mauger and Polad were discussing a future together, they were given the opportunity to take over Cathedrale D’Image and leaped.

Immersive shows there usually take six months to put together. In 2008, the venue’s director came to Mauger with a problem: an exhibit was slated to open in two weeks using very new video projectors, but the show wasn’t ready.

“I said to him, ‘OK I’ll do it in two weeks,'” says Mauger who actually pulled it off in 13 days to ensure she wasn’t working on her daughter’s birthday. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

“I was the only one who wanted to take this risk.”

Julien Baron also worked at the venue, and Mauger knew she wanted to partner with him one day. Their first creative team effort was her wedding in 2006 and they are co-directors of Imagine Van Gogh. Mauger is the creative arm while Baron manages the technical side.

“He’s very strict when he’s doing things and that’s so important because we have so many video projectors, so much hardware and software he needs to manage,” says Mauger, who is close to his family and calls Baron her “best friend.”

The technical aspects are necessary to convey all they want to without using words, and there’s so much that goes into the story of Van Gogh.

His brother Theo, an art dealer living in Paris, saw the talent and passion Vincent had for painting and invited him to come live in the City of Lights. It was there Vincent met his contemporaries – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro – but more importantly, was given access to new resources such as the first artificial pigments being created in small squeeze tubes allowing them to be carried out into the fields and gardens where Van Gogh loved to work.

At this time, artwork from Japan – bold, minimalist images conveying great feeling – were inspiring European artists and Van Gogh was swept up in this movement.

Part of the Imagine Van Gogh exhibit includes suspended screens to recreate Japonism’s floating esthetic Van Gogh worked to capture in his paintings.

While many know unflattering tidbits of Van Gogh’s story – his tempestuous demeanour and apparent argument with Gauguin prompting him to lop off his ear – it’s a tragedy his love of art couldn’t save him from his demons.

“He was not totally mad, he was just someone who was depressed and because of that, he was working a lot because he really wanted to leave something,” Mauger said. “That’s so interesting and so positive for me. It was not someone so sad because he was so happy to work and to be a painter.”

It’s this understated emotion Mauger strives to express with her work. Museums usually require visitors keep one metre from artwork, so it’s difficult to see the detail in paintings. And for children, museum art is hung above their heads, excluding them from the experience.

With the enormous size of the pieces in Image Totale, every centimetre of the work is accessible, and the elements of movement and music add a layer of depth for the viewer.

“Most of the time, children are dancing because there is this music that helps you to understand a bit of what (Van Gogh) probably wanted you to feel in front of those paintings,” Mauger said.

“If you’re a family, you won’t understand the same thing as a child, as the mother or a father or adult couple. Everybody is going to see the same thing but won’t understand the same thing, but everybody will come back with understanding, a new understanding of Van Gogh, and I did my job.”

— By Jenny Feniak, Postmedia

jfeniak@postmedia.com

With files from Joe Belanger, The London Free Press

If you go:

What: Imagine Van Gogh: The Original Immersive Exhibition in Image Totale

When: Opening Saturday and continuing until Jan. 8.

Where: 100 Kellogg Lane.

Tickets: Starting at $39 (plus taxes), visit the website imagine-vangogh.com for more information or tickets.