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      The Immersive Van Gogh Installation Has Found Its Hit Demographic: Moms. We Asked One of Our Own for Her Review

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      As immersive Van Gogh light experiences have opened all across the country this summer, our staff noticed a distinct tread: Our moms were contacting us about them. Whether it was the magic of Van Gogh in family lore or the magic of Facebook’s targeted marketing, the phenomenon was real. But should we actually recommend the experience to our moms? Did it hold up?
      Last month, we invited Seija Goldstein—mother of Artnet News editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein—onto the Art Angle podcast to get to the heart of its appeal. After that podcast was recorded, our distinguished guest finally got a chance to visit the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in downtown New York—and so of course we wanted to share her review. Here it is.

      Date of Visit: June 30, 2021
      Seija Goldstein. Photo by Andrew Goldstein.
      Travel to Location: I ventured to take the subway for the first time since early March 2020. It was not too crowded at midday, and almost everyone was wearing a mask. I took two trains, with a change at 34th Street station, from Upper East Side, then a longish walk in 90 Fahrenheit-plus heat to Pier 36. There were no taxis to take anywhere near the East Broadway subway stop. Use your Google Maps for walking directions; nobody I asked had any idea where the pier was.
      Once I got to the pier, there was no waiting in line to get in, and I walked straight through to the third and the largest room. I could not find a seat in the largest open area and ended up in a side section.
      Exterior of Immersive Van Gogh at Pier 26. Photo by Ben Davis.
      The Show Itself: The show started almost immediately and I discovered that it runs for 30 minutes in a loop, with the next showing starting right away.
      Inside the main chamber of Immersive Van Gogh, with the mirrored partitions at left. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Images of Van Gogh’s art are projected onto the walls and, at times, on the floor. Some wall sections in the middle of the space were mirrored, so you could see the show everywhere. There were a few short benches, some chairs, and you could rent small cushions to sit on the floor.
      I watched the show in the side section, on three smaller walls, and was not all that impressed. However, as I was leaving, the next show started and I found a seat in the largest open area with a huge wall, and decided to stay for a second run.
      I’m happy I did, because the experience was so much better, more immersive. (Hint: If you go, sit in the back of the large third room, facing the huge wall on the right.)
      Visitors contemplate a projection of a Van Gogh landscape along a large wall in Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Van Gogh’s pictures appeared massive all around you. To me, the most impressive images were his flowers and landscapes. I wished that some of them would have stayed up longer on the screens—by the time I got my phone out to take a picture, they were gone. Overall, the colors were stunning and you really got to see Van Gogh’s signature heavy brush strokes.
      Upside-down projections of Van Gogh within Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Unfortunately, the portraits worked less well. In order to show movement, some faces twisted and distorted. A series of self-portraits at the end of show first came up upside down and then turned around, which was just weird.
      Another disappointment was Van Gogh’s bedroom, where the pieces of furniture moved and turned across the screen and never seemed to find their place.
      An animation builds up furniture from Van Gogh’s studio in Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      The projections were accompanied by loud music. I recognized Edith Piaf and some beautiful cello music, but most of it was not very memorable. Perhaps there was a connection to the paintings that I did not get.
      The Verdict: My premium flex peak ticket cost about $70, including all fees. Was it worth it? After the first show I’d have said no way, but after the second it became a closer call.
      Tickets are timed and it did not feel overcrowded, so let’s call it COVID pricing: They need to make their profit with fewer visitors and are employing quite a few people. At the same time I got a little shot of culture after a long drought. A bit pricy for 30 minute show, but under the circumstances, who’s complaining!
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      Documenta Will Forge Ahead With the Show’s 15th Edition in the Summer of 2022 as Planned

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      Documenta has decided that its 15th edition will take place next summer as planned, despite ongoing uncertainty due to the pandemic.
      The supervisory board and shareholders of the exhibition met this morning to decide whether it should maintain its original schedule of June 18 to September 25, 2022. Christian Geselle, chair of the supervisory board and the mayor of Kassel, said that during an hours-long discussion, the various actors weighed a range of complications, including staff organizational issues and travel plans for the artists and cultural workers who come to Kassel from all over the world for the exhibition.
      After considering the possibility of holding an event with restrictions on travel, the board ultimately decided to proceed largely as planned, even if it means scaling down exhibition expectations and visitor numbers.
      One of the world’s most prestigious art exhibitions, Documenta takes place every five years in Kassel, an otherwise quiet city in Germany. Ruangrupa, an artist-collective based in Jakarta is curating the 15th edition, making it the first collective to do so.
      Ade Darmawan, a member of Ruangrupa, said at a press conference that most of their preparations so far have taken place on Zoom. “This has also been great to expand our horizons,” he said. The collective has already selected around 53 artists, who will be announced in September.
      “The idea of postponing means that we are envisioning a time when things can go back to normal, but this likely won’t happen,” said Darmawan. “We need to live with these new normalities.”
      Darmawan said that groups of artists have been able to travel to site visits in Kassel since June.
      For the next edition, Ruangrupa is focusing on the concept lumbung, a collectively governed rice barn in rural Indonesia where food is stored for the benefit of the community.
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      Salvador Dalí… Introvert? A New Show Looks at the Quieter Side of the Debaucherous Surrealist’s Life

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      Salvador Dalí painted an outlandish and dream-like universe. On occasion, he and his wife, Gala, brought those visions to dazzling life with outlandish parties hosted at their home in Portlligat, Spain. 
      The Surrealist couple’s soirees are the stuff of legend. Elaborately staged costumes were a must, with guests and hosts decked out in all manner of concoctions.
      Wild animals were often on the guest list, too, and could be found roaming freely through the Dalí’s fascinating home.
      At one such fête, Gala Dalí spent much of the evening reclining in a broad, velvet-covered bed, with a costume horse’s head crowning her head. Waiters served her food in a golden slipper, as a lion cub on a lease on the bed beside her (the party was, believe it or not, a benefit for refugees). 
      Despite (or because of) how extravagant the parties were, rumors swirled that the couple was involved with something more illicit. Orgies or satanical cabals were not infrequent accusations.
      Salvador Dalí, Les Dîners de Gala (pp. 16-17). Courtesy of Taschen.
      Though that was more the stuff of gossip, the Dalís’ culinary predilections were no more puritanical, as evidenced in the artist’s 1973 Surrealist cookbook Les Dîners de Gala (the dazzlingly illustrated book was reissued by Taschen in 2016).
      On the menu, one finds Frog Pasties, Toffee with Pine Cones, and, yes, a Peacock à l’Impériale dressed and surrounded by its court, which features a taxidermied peacock presented on a platter. Dalí described the recipes not as healthy (never!), but “devoted to the pleasure of taste.” 
      Those pleasures of taste came, of course, at great material expense—financial burdens which the artist and Gala, who was also his manager, funded through commercial endorsements including advertisements for Lanvin chocolates, which further played up the mustached caricature of Dalí’s persona. Such enterprises earned the couple derision in many circles; André Breton nicknamed Dalí “Avida Dollars,” an anagram of the artist’s name meaning “eager for dollars.” 
      But now a new exhibition, “Dalí at Home,” at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, presents a softer look at the artist’s years in Portlligat. While photographs of Dalí in flamboyant poses drew wonder and disdain from the public alike, there were, as the exhibition shows, a few photographers who formed intimate friendships with the artist, gaining access to the personal and very private world he kept in Cadaqués, Portlligat, and nearby Figueres, the town where he was born.
      Horst P. Horst, Salvador and Gala Dalí (1950/2016). Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. Courtesy of Condé Nast and the Horst Estate.
      In nearly 40 portraits by the photographers Horst P. Horst, Ricardo Sans, Melitó Casals, Lies Wiegman, and Robert Descharnes, the artist is presented informally, at times even tenderly, as he works, relaxes, and chats with friends at his home.
      Primarily taken in the 1950s and early 1960s, one sees a different Dalí—an artist who (even momentarily) appears unaware of himself. One photograph by Horst shows Dalí and Gala walking along the rocks of Costa Brava, chatting. In another, Dalí is snapping a simple photograph of Gala in an olive orchard. 
      The home in Portlligat (today the Salvador Dalí House-Museum) held deep sentimental value for the artist, which may explain the unaffected ease of these images. He lived and worked in the house for most of his life: it was his primary residence from 1930 to 1982, aside from his years spent in the United States.
      Impoverished and financially cut off from his family, Dalí first set up a home in a small fisherman’s hut in the town, drawn to the isolated landscape and the light (many of his paintings are based on its landscape), and spent some 40 years building it out. (In 1968, Dalí purchased a castle in Púbol, Spain, as a retreat for Gala. With their relationship growing increasingly rancorous, Gala moved to the castle full time soon after. Dalí was apparently only able to visit her by invitation). 
      “Portlligat is the place of production, the ideal place for my work,” the artist once said. “Everything fits to make it so: time goes more slowly and each hour has its proper dimension. There is a geological peacefulness: it is a unique planetary case.”  The home, he explained, had a biographical element to it.
      Ricardo Sans, Dalí in Fireplace (1950) Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. Courtesy of Ricardo Sans, © Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020.
      Over the decades, this wholly unique home became—rather than a place of pure spectacle—something quite cozy, filled with mementos, carpets, and velvet pillows, gatherings of dried flowers, and antique furniture. In one photograph the artist is crouching inside a fireplace writing or drawing, almost like a small child hiding at home. 
      “There is only one difference between a madman and me,” Dalí famously quipped. “The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.”
      What these pictures seem to say is that even madness can sometimes look quite ordinary.  
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      Botanical Gardens Around the World Are Hosting Augmented Reality Artworks by Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui, and Other Artists This Fall

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      This fall, a group of artworks by Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui, and other contemporary artists will simultaneously go on view in a dozen different gardens worldwide. In a sense, that is. They’re augmented reality artworks, all belonging to “Seeing the Invisible,” a new exhibition sponsored by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund and the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens—the latter of which is one of the sites in which the newly-commissioned projects will also go on view. 
      Other hosting locations include the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in South Africa, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The show, which will span six countries in total, brands itself as the “first exhibition of its kind to be developed in collaboration with botanical gardens from around the world.”

      In each case, the artists’ efforts will be situated among the local flora thanks to a dedicated, downloadable app. The idea, said exhibition co-curator Tal Michael Haring in a statement, is to break down “the binary between what is often considered ‘natural’ versus ‘digital.’”
      “Coming out of the pandemic when outdoor experiences and nature have taken on a new meaning and gravity in our lives, this exhibition represents a fresh way for people to engage with art and nature simultaneously,” Haring added. 
      Outset co-founder Candida Gertler and director Mirav Katri even offered a name for the special brand of work in the show: “this exhibition [bridges] the physical and digital worlds to create a new ‘phygital’ model,” they said in the show’s announcement.
      Ori Gersht, On Reflection Virtual (2014).
      Many of the artworks going on view, including pieces by Sigalit Landau and Jakob Kudsk Steensen, were commissioned specifically for the show by the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens in partnership with the Outset Contemporary Art Fund; other examples, such as contributions from Ori Gersh and Sarah Meyohas, were adapted from existing projects. 
      It’s the first AR experience for many on the exhibitor list, the show’s other co-curator, Hadas Maor, said, though didn’t specify who. Similarly, details surrounding the projects have yet to be announced, but Maor noted that “critical issues around the environment” will be a major theme. 
      See the full list of exhibiting artists and locations here.
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      Painter Jason Martin Found Hope During Lockdown by Creating Sculptural, Color-Saturated New Paintings—See Images Here

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      Artist Jason Martin’s work has long captured the attention of viewers for the almost sculptural effect produced by the painter’s thick strokes of impasto. Each of his horizontal bands, which mimic the effect of canyon striations, challenge one’s perception of dimensionality by appearing to reach beyond the plane of the work itself. 
      While Martin, who studied at Goldsmith’s College in London in the early 1990s, has in past exhibitions adhered to more neutral color palettes in order to emphasize his work’s textural scapes, he is exploring bold new territory now, as illustrated in his latest show, “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery Shanghai, which opened earlier this month and is on view through late August.
      The work marks an exciting new chapter for the artist, who sought to return to the fundamentals of painting while in his studio in Portugal during much of 2020. It consists of a series of bold new shapes and bolder colors, partly inspired by Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana—two artists who played a key role in this shift for the artist.
      In the space, Martin’s round works in oriental blue and cobalt violet assume center stage on the gallery’s first and second walls, while further back in the later rooms, one can see an ultramarine blue tondo followed by a series of neon pink and scarlet canvases. The works, the gallery notes, “illustrate the core of Martin’s practice, yet [also] depict the ever-evolving pursuit of an artist exploring new and unique ways to handle the medium and the scenes that emerge.”
      In many ways, Martin’s hypnotic, colorful forms emit a more energetic, joyful sense of aliveness than his previous work, employing for the first time, too, mirrored surfaces using metallics like gold, silver, copper, and nickel in some of the works. All are meant to inspire, according to the gallery, “a desire to escape the melancholy and start anew.”
      To view Martin’s works, check out images of the show below and on the gallery’s website. 
      Installation view of Jason Martin’s “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery. Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Installation view of Jason Martin’s “Space, Light, Time” at Lisson Gallery Shanghai. Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      James Martin, Untitled (Quinacridone scarlet) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Installation view of Jason Martin’s Untitled (Fluorescent pink / Titanium white) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      A closeup of Jason Martin’s Untitled (Fluorescent flame red / Rosso laccato) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Jason Martin, Untitled (Ultramarine blue) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Jason Martin, Untitled (Ultramarine blue) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Jason Martin, Untitled (Cobalt violet) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
      Jason Martin, Untitled (Permanent red) (2021). Photo courtesy Lisson Gallery.
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      See Socially Engaged Works by Carrie Mae Weems, Titus Kaphar, and Other Artists in Antwaun Sargent’s Curatorial Debut at Gagosian

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      Last week, as the streets of Chelsea were bathed in the golden light of early evening, a line wrapped around the block as creative types queued up to be admitted to the night’s hottest event. It wasn’t a restaurant or club, it was the opening of “Social Works,” a group exhibition at Gagosian’s West 24th Street gallery.
      Curated by writer and newly appointed Gagosian director Antwaun Sargent, “Social Works” features art by Kenturah Davis, Theaster Gates, Titus Kaphar, Rick Lowe, Carrie Mae Weems, and others, all of whom in some way reflect on Black communities and social engagement.
      “Given the last year of the pandemic and protest and the history in which Black artists operate, the work does more than just sit quietly on the wall,” Sargent told the New York Times.
      Christie Neptune, Untitled (2021).© Christie Neptune. Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, Maine, and Gagosian.
      Linda Goode Bryant, founder of the gallery Just Above Midtown and Project EATS, an urban farming organization, grew vegetables in the gallery and a video made in collaboration with architect Elizabeth Diller titled Are we really that different? (2021).
      Theaster Gates, meanwhile, pays homage to DJ Frankie Knuckles, the “Godfather of house music” and an icon of the Black and queer music scenes of the 1980s. Rick Lowe, founder of the Project Row Houses organization in Texas, presents a new series of works documenting the Tulsa Race Massacre.
      See more images of the show below.
      “Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
      Alexandria Smith, Iterations of a galaxy beyond the pedestal, (2021). © Alexandria Smith. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
      “Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
      Carrie Mae Weems, The British Museum (2006–). © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Gagosian.
      Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #5 (2021). © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas Dubrock. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
      “Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
      Lauren Halsey, black history wall of respect (II) (2021). © Lauren Halsey. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy of the artist, David Kordansky Gallery, and Gagosian.
      Kenturah Davis, the bodily effect of a color (sam) (2021). © Kenturah Davis. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio. Courtesy of the artist, Matthew Brown Los Angeles, and Gagosian.
      Theaster Gates, A Song for Frankie (2017–21). © Theaster Gates. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gaosian.
      “Social Works,” installation view, 2021. Artworks © artists. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
      “Social Works” is on view through August 13 at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street. 
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      Researchers Discovered a Bookmark Drawn on by Vincent Van Gogh Inside an Old Novel. Now, It’s on View for the First Time

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      In 1883, Vincent Van Gogh gave a friend a book about French peasants. More than 135 years later, researchers discovered that the novel contained another present, too: a handmade bookmark, featuring a series of early sketches by the Dutch artist. 
      Made when the artist was still in his late 20s, the three drawings are laid out on a single strip of paper. Each depicts a single figure—perhaps peasants inspired by those in the book.
      Now, for the first time, the drawings are on public view in “Here to Stay,” an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam that’s comprised of artworks and other artifacts that have entered the institution’s collection over the past decade. 
      “Relatively very few drawings from Van Gogh’s early period survive, although we know he must have made hundreds,” Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the museum, said in a statement. “Small informal sketches like these—they are really tiny—are even more scarce, and practically limited to letter sketches.”
      Meedendorp added that the drawings were likely completed at the end of 1881 when the artist was living in his parents’ village, Etten. The strip, the researcher went on, “gives an idea of Van Gogh’s quick scribbling capacities, and the item as such is a rare tangible witness of his reading habits: a personalized bookmarker.”
      Three recently-discovered sketches made by Vincent Van Gogh circa 1881. Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum.
      The drawings were found in a copy of Histoire d’un Paysan, an illustrated novel about the French Revolution told through the perspective of a peasant, according to Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh specialist who first reported the news in The Art Newspaper. Van Gogh gave the book to fellow Dutch artist Anthon van Rappard in 1883.
      “I do think you’ll find the Erckmann-Chatrian beautiful,” Van Gogh wrote in a missive to van Rappard that same year, referring to the book’s authors, Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian.
      After van Rappard died in 1892, the book was passed on to his wife. It stayed with her family for generations, until 2019, when it was sold to the Van Gogh Museum.
      “The drawings date from the early months of Van Gogh’s serious efforts to become an artist,”  Bailey told Artnet News in an email. “They are sketchy and slightly crude works, but are nevertheless highly revealing. They emphasize his interest in depicting the human figure and his interest in the lives of the peasants in the village where his parents were living.”
      Shortly after Van Gogh mailed the book, van Rappard visited him in the Dutch town of Nuenen. There, Van Gogh sketched a portrait of his friend—the largest such drawing he’s believed to have made. 
      However, the duo’s friendship dissolved shortly thereafter, when van Rappard criticized Van Gogh’s 1885 lithograph of The Potato Eaters. Angered by the perceived betrayal, Van Gogh sliced the portrait he had made of van Rappard in half. Today, only the top register of the drawing remains. 
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      ‘We Have So Much Illusion’: Watch Artist Sarah Sze Blend the Tactility of Organic Materials With the Intangibility of Images

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      Artist Sarah Sze’s work is not easily categorized. It slips between sculpture and painting, harnessing light and shadows from projectors to shift a viewer’s perceptions between twinkling mirrors and organic materials.
      At Storm King Art Center, in New York’s Hudson Valley, an exhibition inaugurating Sze’s new permanent sculpture on the grounds combines all of the disparate parts of her practice into one 50-foot installation, which acts as a portal from the gallery space to the vast outdoor landscape.
      In the work, titled Fifth Season (2021), Sze’s fascination with entropy and fractured images are reflected in the array of materials, which include organic matter like soil and plants that are native to Storm King, along with photographs, paint, and prisms. Sze’s new permanent sculpture on the grounds, Fallen Sky, also considers the relationship between individuals and their environment. The work consists of stainless steel mirrored surfaces built into the hillside to reflect the world above, like a puddle of sky that is always changing.
      Sarah Sze, Fifth Season (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Storm King Art Center.
      In an exclusive interview with Art21, filmed as part of the Extended Play series in 2016, Sze describes her fascination with combining the sensory aspects of materials with the onslaught of digital images in contemporary culture.
      “I’m really interested in this kind of pendulum swing—this desire to be able to feel, touch, and smell materials, and the other end of the pendulum being the reality that we have a distance from materials because we have so much time with images,” Sze told Art21. “We have so much illusion, but we don’t have touch, we don’t have taste, smell, we don’t have that Intimacy with images.”

      Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below. “Sarah Sze: Fallen Sky” is a new permanent installation at Storm King, and “Sarah Sze: Fifth Season” is on view at Storm King from June 26 through November 8, 2021. 
      [embedded content]
      This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org

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