"Van Gogh Live", and Old Istanbul

This has been a cultural week for us. We first went to the "Van Gogh Alive" exhibition in the Antrepo 3 exhibition space in Karaköy, next to Istanbul Modern. This was an extraordinary experience. The paintings are displayed digitally on huge screens in a totally dark space. There are over three thousand images in all, shown in chronological order, accompanied by classical music.

There are also some wonderful effects. For example, in the painting of Van Gogh's room (above), the bare room appears first, followed by the placing of individual peices of furniture until the painting is complete. We also saw wheat ears blowing in the wind, and then the crows, in his famous painting of Wheatfield with Crows, suddenly flying away out of the painting.

The exhibition was really difficult to photograph, as the room was so dark, but there are some good photos on this site where the photographer was able to introduce light into the area.

Another exhibition we went to was the "Historic Photographs of the Anatolian Shore" at the Pera Museum. This gave a fascinating glimpse into old Istanbul, and how the city looked before the advent of the ugly concrete residential blocks that disfigure much of the city today. There were also descriptions of the original villages dotted along the shores of the Bosphorus, that were ultimately swallowed up into the great metropolis that is modern Istanbul.

We also had time to look at two other art exhibitions in the Pera Museum, "Sultans, Merchants, Painters: The Early Years of Turkish-Dutch Relations", and "Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters", both these exhibited fine paintings, engravings and books from past eras. Fascinating!