Van Gogh Deserves Better Than Being Turned Into a Screensaver

I have a confession: I enjoy immersive art. I enjoy walking into a room where color spills across the walls, the floor trembles politely, and a familiar painting suddenly feels large enough to swallow my mortgage. I am also completely exhausted by the phrase “step inside the painting,” which has become the cultural equivalent of “circle back.”

The biggest offender is the Van Gogh projection spectacular, a genre now so widespread that somewhere, at this very moment, a sunflower is being enlarged to the size of a swimming pool while a piano plays music that sounds like a breakup in a luxury candle shop.

Here is my position: projected Van Gogh is not inherently foolish. The foolish part is pretending that scale alone equals insight.

Van Gogh’s paintings already contain motion. The sky in Starry Night churns. His trees look windblown and slightly overcaffeinated. His brushstrokes are not decoration; they are the event. Enlarging them can reveal how those marks collide and gather force. For a child, a first-time museumgoer, or anyone who finds traditional galleries intimidating, that encounter may be genuinely thrilling. Art does not have to enter through the front door wearing a sensible shoe.

But too many immersive shows flatten the paintings into a parade of inspirational wallpaper. The work becomes a backdrop for selfies, the music tells us when to feel sad, and the wall text whispers that Van Gogh “saw beauty in everything,” a sentence so vague it should be arrested for loitering. His art was not a scented candle. It was made from loneliness, discipline, economic desperation, spiritual doubt, and an almost frightening commitment to looking.

The best immersive exhibitions would trust visitors with more than atmosphere. Show the preparatory drawings. Let the brushwork slow down. Explain the difference between a painting and its digital afterlife. Give us the awkward, unmarketable facts. Let the room occasionally be quiet.

Otherwise, we are not stepping inside Van Gogh. We are stepping inside a screensaver with excellent public relations.

Keep the projections. Keep the giant skies. Keep the children lying on the floor, stunned by blue. But make the spectacle serve the art, not the other way around. Wonder is welcome. Just ask it to bring a little homework.