Revisiting Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night (above) at the Van Gogh Alive show to be held in Shanghai and Beijing later this year. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Grande Exhibitions so far has developed five Sensory 4 art exhibitions, which consists of Monet to Cezanne - The French Impressionists, Da Vinci Alive and 101 Inventions That Changed the World. The introduction of Van Gogh Alive caters to Chinese audience's growing fascination with Western oil paintings. A Claude Monet (1840-1926) art exhibition at the K11 Art Mall reportedly drew more than 300,000 visitors from March to June last year. Wang Zhongjun, the Chinese movie mogul who co-funded Huayi Brothers Media Corp, spent $61.8 million for a Van Gogh canvas,Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies, at a Sotheby's sale in New York in November.

"Van Gogh lived a legendary life, with so many stories to tell," says Zhou Yi, the show's Chinese curator and a Shanghai-based independent producer who has developed TV shows and stage performances. She says the show will re-shape people's approach to appreciating fine art.

Chen Danqing, the Chinese art critic and painter, said that art exhibitions today have seen the breaking down of museum walls and national borders, because digital technologies access people to as many artworks as possible. "If Van Gogh were still alive, he would have been rather surprised to find his works being segmented, enlarged and minimized," he told a press conference for the show in Shanghai late last year.

Van Gogh Alive will be staged from April to early August at Shanghai Xintiandi, a recreational area featuring the city's stylish Shikumen housing. The exhibition venue will be supported by a base frame that is being built in an artificial lake.

"The Monet show at the K11 Art Mall proved to be a successful marriage of art exhibition and commercial property. It attracted not only art lovers but also those who don't go to museums or galleries. The sensation it caused shows that fine art is not limited to a small crowd, if it comes to people instead of making people coming to it," says Zhou Yi.

The show will then travel to Beijing's Joy City Mall for anther three months. That shopping compound held the open-air 100 Doraemon Secret Gadgets Expo that took the city by storm from April to June.