Last Friday, Jane and I visited the Van Gogh ‘immersive experience’ in Leicester. I’m a fan of both Van Gogh’s work and digital experimentation so I was surprised to find that I didn’t love it quite as much as I had expected.

Part of the reason was embarrassingly prosaic. The venue, an old church, was not well equipped with toilets. Between the large coffee I’d had for breakfast and the chill of an old stone building, I did find myself on the build up to busting for a pee. That isn’t a fair reason to judge the exhibition poorly although it is a very practical consideration and the lack of facilities wasn’t one I’d anticipated.

It was more than that though. The hub of the presentation relies on projecting images onto surfaces – the walls of the church and other ones that have been added. There were some very impressive graphics, including a lot of trompe l’oeil effects. However, rather than immersing me in Van Gogh’s mastery of the painted canvas, I found that it separated me from that. The still images were relatively small scale and didn’t convey the energy of his painting style; the large, projected ones were too fast moving to dwell on.

Reflecting on what I felt, I decided my problem was that someone else was spoon-feeding me their pre-digested version of what Van Gogh was about. Not only that but their vision missed many points of what has fascinated me about his life. Where, for example, was his Christian faith and his attempts to put that into practice? He was exalted as an artistic ‘divinity’ and, to my eyes, not given his place as a troubled but precious human.

I wouldn’t say it was a wasted visit but I came away with a greater sense of the value of studying an artist’s work either through high resolution digital reproductions (where you can get a sense of the brushwork and technique) and, better yet, seeing the canvases directly.