Claude Monet Immersive Experience brings visionary artist's works to life in Doraville

Walking through a wide-ranging life story told in paint:

“There’s well over 400 paintings represented in one form or another throughout the experience … You start to build a story,” Iacampo explained. “In Monet’s case, we focused very much on two elements to tell the story. One was lighting in the different parts because it was so important in his life. Two was his voyages. I mean, he traveled everywhere to paint. He went to Norway so we have scenes with snow. He went to London and you have the fog. He went to Brittany and you have the large rock formations. He went to Southern France.”

“Obviously when you talk about Monet, you can’t not talk about his garden at Giverny, or his house at Giverny. What was really interesting about his house in Giverny is when you see pictures of these brilliant blues and brilliant yellows, I mean, shocking colors of the different rooms, which really have nothing to do with the paintings that he was painting, which I think tells you a little bit about the person … We decided what we were going to do with Monet is, yes, focus on his major works, but tell it from the perspective of his voyages.” 

How Monet’s dream-like, blended brushstroke style may have evolved:

“You often find that one of the handicaps that the artist had becomes a force for the artist, and I’ve got two great examples for that. One is with Van Gogh, where he was somewhat colorblind, and so it led to these brilliant colors that he used, which really weren’t real, but … he was enriching it,” Iacampo said. “With Monet, Monet had cataracts, and so a lot of his work, when you see them, he would have to go back and forth between the scene, walk back to the painting, and I think that that handicap, if you want to call it that, helped him develop a style of things not being clear … scenes of the colors blending one into the other.”

An artist who seems almost to have foretold immersive art viewing:

“When he did [‘Water Lilies,’] historically, it wasn’t really clear what he wanted to do with it, because yes, there was this idea of a permanent placement of the Orangerie. But then there was a dispute, and it really took a long time for that to evolve, and we discuss the Orangerie in the exhibit … It’s this idea that you are surrounded by his garden. In essence, that’s really what you feel when you’re looking at the three large paintings that make the Orangerie. You feel like you’ve gone to his garden, and you feel a little bit what he felt. And from Monet, that’s important because he painted so much scenery, that I think that the notion of ‘immersive’ happened every day.”

“Monet painted principally large canvases, large visual canvases. So I think his art lends itself to this technology,” Iacampo said. “It’s an opportunity, really, through the eyes of the artist to travel to over 10 countries in Europe because you feel you’re there. You feel one moment you’re on a boat in England or you feel at one point that you’re on the gondola in Venice because you’re in front of these works of art, or you feel you’re in the snow-covered grounds of Norway … We recreate his atelier in Giverny, where we have a room where we have the paintings that you see when you go to Giverny, recreated exactly as if you were there.”

“Claude Monet: The Immersive Experience” opens Oct. 28 at Exhibition Hub Art Center. Tickets and more information are available at www.exhibitionhub.com/exhibitions/claude-monet-the-immersive-experience.