Virtual Reality - Van Gogh’s Palette

This activity is on offer from 9:40 a.m. to 5:20 p.m. (9 p.m. on Thursdays) throughout the duration of the “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise” exhibition. The immersive experience lasts about 10 minutes.

Equipped with a virtual reality headset, there you are in Doctor Gachet’s drawing room in Auvers-sur-Oise, getting a first look at the portrait of the Doctor’s daughter, Marguerite, painted by Van Gogh. There’s a paint-smeared palette on the table. So begins Marguerite Gachet’s story and your plunge into the very heart of the palette, which has become an immersive landscape. Through Marguerite’s memories, you set off in interactive, animated discovery of four of Van Gogh’s major paintings from the Auvers-sur-Oise period.

Monsieur Vincent finished an improbable number of tubes of red, green and Prussian blue paint. He complained a great deal, often saying that he never had enough of them.

A multisensory universe

The palette: In order to recreate Van Gogh’s palette in 3D, photogrammetry software was used to find the painting’s materiality, sculpted by brushstrokes, along with all the tiny variations of color.

The guide: in this particular universe, the guide is Van Gogh’s The Kingfisher, a painting that now hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. On each occasion, its flight indicates the area of the palette into which the user is teleported and the objects with which they are invited to interact.

Interacting with matter: interactions made possible throughout the experience enable the user to manipulate Van Gogh’s pictorial matter in order to understand his way of working. Their whole body is engaged in this confrontation with the painting. Three types of interactions have been developed: distortion, colors and brushstrokes.

The music: the piano notes are from Liszt’s transcriptions of operas by Wagner, whom Vincent van Gogh greatly admired. The melodies have been reworked, either slowing them down or speeding them up, so as to suggest the disorientation and suspended time during which the artist painted his works.

The experience is accessible to visitors in wheelchairs. 
The experience is not recommended for under 10 y/o; children under 8 y/o are prohibited.
We remind you that, in view of the technology used, virtual reality experiences are not recommended for pregnant women, people subject to epileptic seizures or migraines, or people with balance or vision disorders.
The VIVE XR Elite headsets enable diopter adjustment for greater visual comfort during the experience. Feel free to inquire about your correction so that our mediators can adjust your headset as required during your visit.
Online reservation is strongly recommended. A few timeslots are also available for onsite sale only, at the end of the day, at 5 p.m. and 5:20 p.m. and at 8:40 p.m. and 9 p.m. on late-closing days. In such cases, reservations and payment are made on the same day, directly with the experience’s reception staff, by bank card only and subject to available places.