The Van Gogh 360 Experience in Mumbai

Vincent Van Gogh is a famous post-impressionist painter from Netherlands who lived a very short life from 1853 to 1890. He created many masterpieces in a short span of just 10 years. Van Gogh 360 Experience is an exhibition where the work of Vincent Van Gogh is projected on all four walls and the floor of a giant enclosure. It is called an immersive painting experience as the admirer might feel they are living inside the painting. It evokes a surreal and beautiful dimension.

We had seen a photo of the exhibition for the first time on the feed of a friend who lives in New York. That is how we got to know about its existence. We discovered the exhibition is happening in Mumbai through yet another friend’s status update. We got a slot around 3 weeks later and finally turned up for the experience on a late afternoon in February.

How to book slots

Tickets are available on Book My Show. Ticket prices get expensive according to entry timing slot — weekday mornings (the cheapest), weekday evenings, weekend mornings, weekend evenings respectively. There is also an option of “all day entry” for your chosen date. It is the most expensive at almost INR 2500 per head. There is also a band of pricing which allows you to flex your entrance by an hour. We chose a weekday 4PM and it was INR 1100 per head.

Once you enter inside there is no enforced exit time and you may stay for as long as you want. The collection of paintings is projected in a loop. The whole collection takes 35 minutes to complete. So, once you start observing repetitions you will know the whole set has ended.

It is mandatory to scan the QR code in your original ticket at the entrance. So, screenshots would not do.

The Introduction to Van Gogh

We turn up at World Trade Centre in Cuffe Parade and stand in the queue. At the entrance there are demo paintings of Van Gogh’s most famous pieces. Each of these comes with a story behind the painting, revealing bits and pieces of Van Gogh’s life and his struggles with mental health. Most of these paintings are exhibited in the projector for the immersive experience.

Van Gogh’s paintings were not considered valuable by society during his lifetime. He painted landscapes, still figures, self-portraits in bold colours. The ordinary intrigued him. He sketched mundane events of peasants’ life— things that were looked down upon in his era.

He is one of the major artists who is at the forefront of post-impressionist art, an art movement that is featured with brushstrokes that bring out the tangibility of the objects being painted. Post-Impressionism developed as an alternative to “Impressionism”, an art movement that keeps the subject in the painting vague. Some of the paintings by Van Gogh are extremely vivid and bring out the emotion in unexpected ways (think “The Scream”).

Some of the paintings displayed in Van Gogh 360 Mumbai are—The Starry Night, Sunflower, The Potato Eaters, Almond Blossoms, Wheatfield with Crows, Café Terrace at Night, several portraits, and self-portraits.

The Exhibition

We enter the exhibition hall. Finally, the part we were waiting for about a month! We see people sitting and even lying on the floor and just letting themselves become one with the paintings. We do the same. Vibrant colours and patterns wash over us. The background scores could not be better.

In 1888, Van Gogh had cut off his own ear lobe in a psychotic outburst and gotten himself admitted into a mental asylum. His most famous painting “The Starry Night”, is actually the night view from the window of that asylum. The calm and beautiful landscape of bright yellow wheatfields depicted in the painting “Wheatfield and the crow” is the same wheat field where Van Gogh would shoot himself in the chest soon after. It is beautiful and horrifying at the same time.

The more you know about Van Gogh’s life and struggles, the more his works start making sense. It just keeps on becoming more and more tragic – hauntingly romantic and poetic for observers like us. Anyways, we spend some good 2 hours inside and we are not bored at all.

The only downside are the Instagrammers who pose and keep posing infinitely, right in front of the projector/screen, blocking everyone’s view. During our time, things get so out of hand that a fellow visitor has to yell at one such example. “We are not here to photograph you, move and let us see the painting”. Thanks to him we enjoy our show with minimum Instagrammer clutter.

Pan-India Van Gogh 360

The exhibition kick started from Mumbai but according to their website it will visit Delhi (tickets available already), Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, Pune and Surat soon. Keep an eye out and all the best!

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