hen Immersive Van Gogh opened last year at the Lighthouse Artspace in Old Town Scottsdale, it was an immediate hit, and social media feeds were full of photos and videos of residents and tourists taking in the experience. Last month, Lighthouse added Immersive Klimt to the mix, based on the life and work of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The two experiences, Klimt and Van Gogh, will show in the same space at different times. But don’t expect them to be the same. Immersive Van Gogh is simple and beautiful, with the Dutch artist’s post-Impressionist loveliness moving and morphing to a gentle classical score. Immersive Klimt is darker, racier, and more chal- lenging for the viewer — which ultimately makes for a more interesting experience. Van Gogh and Klimt are the first two parts of a trilogy envisioned by the show’s creator, Massimiliano Siccardi, according to Lighthouse creative consultant Richard Ouzounian, who was in town for the opening. “Massimiliano, after he did Van Gogh for us, said, ‘If you want more, my dream initially is to do a trilogy of Van Gogh, Klimt, and Kahlo, because I feel they were the three great revolutionaries, each in their own way.’ He said, ‘Van Gogh personalized putting his entire life and mental state and everything, just throwing it on the canvas. Klimt was the person who led the whole cultural revolution in Vienna, and his work evolved, and he became, I feel, prophetic. And then Frida was a revolutionary on fronts for all the areas she fought in: in racism, in feminism, in ableism, and all these things. So they were the three revo- lutionaries,’” Ouzounian says. The show opens with falling pieces of sketch paper, and photos of Klimt going up in flames. “Klimt believed that you should always paint with passion, and passion should burn,” Ouzounian says. Over the next hour or so, viewers will see the evolution of Klimt’s work put in the context of the world of late-19th and early 20th-century Vienna. Klimt’s career in painting began with classical training, and his early works bear the hallmarks of the standard style of the time. “In the beginning, he was doing all the great Romantics,” Ouzounian says. “But then he kept trying to paint with his own voice, his own stuff.” As befits a man who never married but had 14 >>p 21 18 APRIL 21ST– APRIL 27TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
