The Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience on London's South Bank promises an immersive journey into the artist's life, but delivers a sedate trudge through giant canvases. Housed in a giant tent, the exhibition offers facts without feeling, leaving visitors with the bottle but not the booze.
The show begins at Van Gogh's tragic end, with an animation of his final painting, Wheatfield With Crows, and a gunshot. Visitors then walk through his memories, but the experience lacks the emotional highs and lows of a true rollercoaster ride. Instead, it feels like a low-key son et lumière, with fastened-down props and a laid-back atmosphere reminiscent of a spiegeltent serving flat beer.
Highlights include a glowing replica of The Yellow House, the most impressive technological feat, and magnified details of Van Gogh's brushstrokes that reveal his passion. However, framed replicas throughout look rubbery, and the dramatisation of his friendship with Paul Gauguin is a drab shadow play. The real meeting with Van Gogh, the review suggests, is in his original paintings, such as Sunflowers at the National Gallery across the Thames.
