For a man who died in 1890, Vincent van Gogh seemed remarkably au fait with 21st-century parlance.
Asked why he had cut off his left ear, the artist replied that this was a misconception and he had in fact only cut off “part of my earlobe”. So why did he shoot himself in the chest with a revolver, causing injuries from which he died two days later?
“This is still a subject of speculation among historians and specialists. The truth of my motivation remains a mystery even to me. Thank you for understanding my mental health struggles,” he says.
This is artificial intelligence Van Gogh, part of a crowd-pulling feature for an exhibition of the artist’s last works at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which also includes a virtual reality experience based on his last paint-encrusted palette.
In May 1890, Van Gogh arrived in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, 30km north of Paris, to be near his brother Theo and be cared for by Dr Paul Gachet, a specialist in the “treatment of melancholy”.
In what would be a final creative frenzy, he produced 74 paintings and 33 drawings in just two months, among them the famous Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, portraits of Gachet and the doctor’s daughter, Marguerite, and his last canvas, Les Racines (Roots), completed just 36 hours before he shot himself.
It is these works, mostly held by the Musée d’Orsay and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam – which has never previously loaned them – that have been assembled for the first time.
Emmanuel Coquery, the exhibition curator, said: “In this unique exhibition we see an astonishing variety of paintings. This work carries much weight because it is the period in which he will end his life. The question everyone asks is why, and the answer is that we just don’t know. Did he feel he had finished his oeuvre or was it an ultimate crisis that was bigger than him?
“We also wanted to break the myth of the cursed artist who was unloved and unrecognised when he died. He was in full ascension at the time, his paintings had begun to sell and he was recognised.”
Coquery says Van Gogh’s final act appeared to be premeditated and the end was not precipitated by crisis but was calm.
“It is extraordinary that he painted so many of these extraordinary paintings in his last days.”
Before entering the exhibition, visitors are invited to the interactive experience, based on the artist’s last paint palette, held by the museum and on display in the exhibition.
“It gives visitors a new way of looking at the art,” said Chloé Jarry from Paris-based Lucid Realities, which co-produced the interactive experience with Vive Arts and the Musée d’Orsay.
“We used the last ever paint palette used by Van Gogh to show the colours as they were at the time and added the touches he used in the paintings to create a virtual landscape.”
“It’s the first time the Musée d’Orsay has put on a VR experience with an exhibition,” she said.
At the end of the exhibition, which opens on Tuesday and runs until February next year, visitors can pose the artist’s AI incarnation questions in a feature developed by the technology start-up Jumbo Mana, which claims its speciality is “breathing life into historical figures”.
Visitors see Van Gogh at the moment he has finished one of his most famous late works, Le Champ de Blé Aux Corbeaux (Wheatfield With Crows). His responses are based on scientific research involving the analysis of the numerous letters the painter wrote – mostly to his brother – carried out by Wouter van der Veen, a Van Gogh specialist who oversaw the project.
Christophe Leribault, the president of the Musée d’Orsay, said the exhibition combined with the AI and VR experiences opened up a new way of looking at an artist who “everyone knew”, which he described as “a revelation”.
“This is a very unusual and powerful exhibition showing that despite his struggles during the last two months of his life, he continued to experiment and we see a great variety of subjects and how inventive he was with paint, canvas and frame,” Leribault said.
“We have many letters from Van Gogh. It is rare that an artist left so many manuscripts and from these it was possible to develop software to have Van Gogh’s responses to our questions, though of course it remains a game. With the VR experience we can immerse ourselves in Van Gogh’s world via the artist’s palette.
“This all gives us a variety of approaches to Van Gogh as a painter who was immensely popular.”
Source : The Guardian