Starry Night Sherwin Williams Bedroom
The bed, although it very much resembles the one that looks a little off-center in the painting, did not spin.
I did not awake before dawn, pull a smock from its wall peg and begin painting feverish dreams in an attempt to leave my mark on the world.
The door that leads to Gauguin's room did not open in the night so that the man could torment me further with his talent and confidence.
Indeed, the door does not open at all, but if it were able to, it would lead only to the extended-stay corporate apartment next door. The passageway was merely a prop, like the window, the brush and pitcher on the nightstand, and the mock paintings on the wall beside the bed. And my night in Vincent Van Gogh's replica bedroom, the exceedingly clever promotional fabrication for the Art Institute's blockbuster "Van Gogh's Bedrooms" exhibition, passed without psychological incident or, alas, masterpieces.
What's it like to sleep in a world-famous painting, one that I, like countless other college students of my era, used to have mounted in poster form on my dormitory bedroom wall?
I thought it would be unsettling, because visitors are essentially on a stage set squeezed into an otherwise soulless River North transient apartment. It is also, in a sense, a slumber party with a suicide, the 19th-century painter who ended his own life, troubled and disappointed, at age 37.
But from head hitting pillow to alarm going off, I don't think I awakened once. I recall nothing unusual about my dreams, either, not even a fantasy, say, of being Don McLean strumming "Vincent" at a coffeehouse in the early 1970s.
Most telling, the room still smells like paint, six weeks after it began accepting overnighters.
Most of the guests booked the North State Street room through rapidly sold-out Airbnb one-night stays; watch Art Institute social media feeds to find when the final bloc of stays is released, likely in early April. Some, like me, got in through the Art Institute's plan to book guests who have a platform from which they can share the experience.
The paint aroma makes sense: It's so important to get the Dutch artist's vibrant palette right, and the Lincolnwood set-fabrication firm Ravenswood Studio did it so well, that a liberal hand with the Sherwin-Williams seems necessary.
That is also, in a sense, the smell of success. The Art Institute is riding Vincent's coattails to its most attended show in almost 15 years, averaging 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day, the museum says. "If trends hold — and we have no idea if they will — we might reach 350,000 visitors or more" by the time the exhibition ends its exclusive, three-month run May 10, said Tracey Button, marketing director for the museum.
A lot of that is the enduring romantic appeal of Van Gogh, who combined vivid, accessible paintings with a tragic life story that is told from a fresh angle in the "Bedrooms" exhibit. The show, which brings his three versions of "The Bedroom" together for the first time in North America, traces the artist's elusive lifelong quest for a home, one that he thought he had found, for a brief few months in 1888, in that famed sleeping chamber in the yellow house in Arles, in the south of France.
"It's another argument for direct experience versus the experience of the experience of the experience digitally," Button said. "There's so much emotion around it. People talk about the bedroom painting as being their favorite painting. People have a lot of heart for him."
New 'Van Gogh's Bedrooms' exhibition brings his famed "Bedroom" paintings together for first time in North America.
You might be able to guess which artist highlighted the show 15 years ago that the current one is more or less matching in attendance. The exhibition was called "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South"; part of what it explored was the volatile relationship between the two painters who slept in adjacent rooms.
But it's not enough just to gather some Van Goghs on the walls and await the hordes. These are more scattered times, with an ever-expanding menu of entertainment options. So the extra promotional work on behalf of the show is playing its part as well.
Observant downtowners have noticed a bevy of "Van Gogh's Bedrooms" promotions in store windows, from Crate & Barrel to Macy's, as store workers compete to showcase their wares in settings inspired by the bedroom. The PROJECTwindows contest is in its fifth year of tying in to Art Institute projects, giving some free promotion to the not-for-profit museum.
A hotel just off Michigan Avenue, The Gwen, is offering a Keys to Van Gogh's Bedroom package at its hotel (not the Airbnb room), which includes VIP tickets to the exhibition and special Van Gogh-themed vodka cocktails, The Bedroom and Starry Night.
A CTA bus is enveloped in exhibition signage, and drivers coming into River North on the Ohio Street exit from the Kennedy Expressway even see a giant billboard for the Art Institute exhibition on the brick wall of a massive storage facility.
The idea is to suggest "one of the biggest cultural happenings all year in the city," Button said. "It feels like the whole city can be galvanized, and tourists can feel like it's a big deal and Chicago really is a cultural destination."
But the masterstroke has been the Airbnb room that lets visitors step into, and then sleep inside, the painting that is the focal point of the exhibition. "That was the wonderful surprise there," said Button. "That has been a key element of getting the wonderful attendance we're getting."
The Art Institute's marketing partners at the Leo Burnett agency offered up the idea as one in a group of potential promotional concepts, and it immediately stood out, she said: "We thought it was going to be big. Burnett thought it was going to be big. I don't even think we could have anticipated that it would have been something that caught people's anticipation globally."
Because of the room, which not only replicates the painting but also carries the added kick of letting you stay in Chicago for $10 a night, media outlets that normally would have no interest in an art exhibition have done stories about it or even have asked to sleep in the bedroom, according to Button. And social media sites, of course, went crazy, especially when they first found out about the room.
The room mostly delivers on the promise. Outside the bedroom, the space is bland but functional, with Wi-Fi and cable TV, granite countertops and stainless appliances in the kitchen, plus almost-generic artwork above the sofa.
As part of the Art Institute of Chicago's new exhibit, "Van Gogh's Bedrooms," a replica has been created of the famous artist's bedroom featured in his paintings.
But it's got a great, 29th-floor balcony overlooking the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's and other points to the west. The artificial sunflowers on the coffee table are a nice, Van Gogh touch, as are the exhibition catalog on the room's desk and the two exhibition tickets that come with your stay.
And the bedroom itself, in Ravenswood's execution, is at first sight stunning, as you struggle to get a photographic angle that takes it all in. (Try the panorama function.) One key difference: The bed is a surprisingly comfortable double, as opposed to the artist's more ascetic single.
My room keys included one for a mailbox in the lobby. This is, remember, a place where people typically stay a month or more. I could not resist taking a look, and amid all the area business fliers pitched to "Resident" and "Our Neighbor at," it seemed that one previous occupant of the room, before the Art Institute leased it, had stayed long enough to become a member at a couple of local cultural institutions.
So no fewer than three Art Institute mailings touting the "Van Gogh's Bedrooms" exhibition were waiting there in Van Gogh's mailbox. Maximum promotional synchronicity had been achieved.
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Starry Night Sherwin Williams Bedroom
Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-0329-van-gogh-bedroom-overnight--20160329-story.html
