Fine art and classical music were not to the taste of many of history’s most prominent Nazis. “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun,” is the line attributed to Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and/or Heinrich Himmler. (It actually comes from a stage play which opened on Hitler’s birthday, but enough of the Nazi-ology). Yet, in a Bordeaux venue called Bassins de Lumières right now, there’s an overwhelming display of culture in the unlikely setting of a Second World War Nazi submarine base.
This former home to Nazi submarines, built with a functionality that is imposing and brutal, retains walls of reinforced concrete, a bomb-proof ceiling and eleven submarine pens. Four of these are flooded, as if ready for some restored U-Boats. Five such bases were built on France’s Atlantic Coast, largely by prisoners of war. And while the galleries and theatres which usually offer high culture sometimes have their own dubious skeletons in the closet, this fascist war machine as digital arts centre is a particularly culpable monument.
On all sides of these wet docks, with their dark histories, the submarine base now rings with a symphony of music and light, pairing the work of European composers and Dutch Old Masters. It includes surefire favourites Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Gogh, together with genre, landscape and still life paintings by lesser-known Dutch artists. There is even naval conflict in the form of a sea battle painted by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. I found this sequence to be verging on a celebration of this venue’s military history.
Extrapolations from these beloved paintings have been rendered as high-definition digital projections, skilfully animated and presented in an immersive, rippling, 360-degree spectacle. The submarine bays, which stretch the length of the hangar, provide a unique water feature, which reflects the light-show. And while these paintings now pulse with feeling, amplified beyond their sober museum origins, they may leave some viewers with a sense of unease. Commentary is merely tucked away on very peripheral text panels. You don’t need to know the dates, titles or authors of the work, you just need to experience this cavalcade of cultural ‘stuff’.
Since 2012, the French production company, Culturespaces, has been fairly aggressively mining art history for digital content. They manage ten sites worldwide, staging 34 exhibitions each year, with six million visitors so far and counting. Along with extractions from the Western painting canon, you will find presentations given over to such diverse but predictable themes as Ancient Egypt, Tin Tin and Marilyn Monroe. Subjects like these, tame and familiar, have acquired new life in what can seem like a whole new medium.
But there is nothing new under the sun. Immersive experiences may be as old as what we blithely call art. What were those prehistoric caves in which we painted, if not immersive? We know nothing conclusively about cave painting, but there is speculation that it was experienced along with music, dance and ritual. At the least, it must have been animated by the movement of oil-fat lamps and the flickering of torch flames. The darkness of Bassins de Lumières, and indeed any such immersive installation, has an appeal which is primal enough to connect with us all.
By presenting culture in this way, Culturespaces might reach an audience who would otherwise avoid traditional museums, but the shred of evidence noted on their website is slim. The company has given free visits to 970 children, 75% of whom had never been to a museum. Detractors might say that a show like Vermeer to Van Gogh, with its minimal emphasis on factual interpretation, is detrimental to an understanding of art whatever the age of the viewer.
The inclusion of Van Gogh here tells you plenty. Van Gogh is the immersive world’s biggest draw, its hottest ticket. Five different companies have sprung up worldwide to surround you in his inimitable world of light, colour and madness. At ‘Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience’, which can be seen in nine locations around the world as I write, you can thrill to starry nights, at any time of day. It’s all very pretty, very musical and there is admittedly some sensationalised text across the walls. The wrong kind of interpretation can also be a problem.
When I saw this installation in East London, there was an additional layer of animated, floating quotes from the painter; Van Gogh’s letters have been combed through for inspiration and motivation. “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together,” says one such quote. It could appear on a Hallmark greeting card.
Compare that with the rigour of a curatorial museum show. For the 2010 show ‘The Real Van Gogh’, the Royal Academy in London sourced 95 original artworks and 30 examples of Vincent’s letters in a way that invited you to study, rather than to kick back and enjoy the sensory overload. There were touchscreens giving access to, as I recall, every word of the artist’s 900-letter correspondence. This was a less troublesome form of immersion.
Nevertheless, if you hate the idea of immersive art-lite experiences, the show at Bassins de Lumières will still take your breath away. Even if you were a high-ranking Nazi official, you’d be hard-pushed not to enjoy the visceral impact of culture packaged in this way. But at this submarine base on the Atlantic coast, the learning experience is no deep dive. The stillness of Vermeer, the anguish of Van Gogh, and the exquisite accuracy of many Dutch paintings have become a thrill ride with little meaning. A fascist monument, which might have best been destroyed or forgotten, is now to be associated with the greatest artistic minds in Europe. There’s no getting away from this limitation; it closes in on all sides in the darkness.
