Vincent Van Gogh & Don McClean: 2 Legends Collide at Immersive Exhibit in Hollywood
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Don McLean the legendary singer/songwriter and known for his ever-popular album and single “American Pie,” performed his other hit sng “Vincent” at the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit in Hollywood last night, Monday, February 28th.
McLean’s performance at this viral, multisensory art exhibit marked the 50th Anniversary of his hit song “Vincent.”
McLean was inspired by Dutch Ppst-Impressionist, Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Starry, Starry Night.
McLean quite literally stepped inside Van Gogh’s most famous paintings upon entering the heart of the gallery.
McLean wrote “Vincent,” also known as “Starry, Starry Night,” in the fall of 1970. Having a special appreciation of art throughout his life, McLean’s inspiration for the song came to him one morning while he was looking through a book about Van Gogh. As he studied a print of Starry, Starry Night, he realized that a song could be written about the artist’s memory through the painting. Since the release of “Vincent,” it has become a permanent part of Van Gogh’s legend.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 28: Don McLean performs “Vincent” at Immersive Van Gogh on February 28, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Lighthouse Immersive and Impact Museums)
I’m standing before a spread of the stuff in the foyer of Los Angeles’ upcoming Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit. The display, not to be confused with rival Van Gogh: the Immersive Experience, is still under construction and won’t open to the public until July 31. So, along with a few dozen other fellow media types, I’ve been invited to a sneak preview. I scarf down the free food, put on a hard hat painted like The Starry Night (I’m instructed to keep this, as it will soon surely “have value”), and begin my immersion.
David Korins, the Tony-nominated creative director who helped design the set of a little-known play called Hamilton and resembles a slightly deflated Armie Hammer, opens the tour. He beckons us into the next room—“this is like Cribs,” he quips—a bare, plaster-smelling hallway he promises will soon be filled. To prove the point, Korins speaks in front of four poster boards depicting what’s to come, simulacra of the room we’re in now. I peek into the gallery-to-be: photoshopped Angelenos’ living counterparts will wander through the foyer, where blown-up versions of Van Gogh’s smoldering eyes and recognizable signature will greet them. They’ll then head down a neon entrance tunnel and toward an absinthe bar that’ll be framed in a field’s worth of sunflowers—a favorite subject of Van Gogh’s.
“It’s funny,” Korins states with unmistakable pride, “people like to talk about the supply chain. I was actually told that…there are no more silk sunflowers to be gotten in all of North America for the next two months, because the Immersive Van Gogh now has them all.”
Immersive Van Gogh is a few things at once: obtrusive, gorgeous, alienating, engrossing. But there’s something else about the exhibit, something my pared-down sneak peek doesn’t let me see in full.
“We have, through artificial intelligence, scanned every single letter that [Van Gogh] ever wrote,” Korins mentions towards the end of his introduction. “And so we’ve created a computer program in which…you can write him anything…and through artificial intelligence and computer learning, he will write you instantly back a unique, one-of-a-kind letter in his own words. It is geopositioned, so if you say, ‘Hey, I was outside and I saw this thing,’ he will know where you are…We’ve written over 23,000 letters back and forth with Vincent.”
It seems all it took were 64 projectors, 500,000 cubic feet of projection space, 148 million pixels, 17 miles of cables, and just a dash of A.I. to guarantee it.
Housed in the former home of Ameoba Music the address has already given it historic Hollywood pedigree. McLean quite literally stepped inside Van Gogh’s most famous paintings upon entering the heart of the gallery.
McLean performed the song at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2019.
Watch it below.
