In a dimly lit warehouse on the North Side, the “Original Immersive Van Gogh” is a 21st century mash-up of light, images and dramatic music that reflects our Instagram/Jumbotron world.

Quite simply, this is art as spectacle.

For 35 minutes, 40 of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are projected on the walls and floors of Lighthouse Artspace Pittsburgh, a 33,000-square-foot-warehouse at 720 E. Lacock St. The show opened Oct. 21 and runs through Feb. 6.

A partnership of Lighthouse Immersive and Impact Museums, the immersive Van Gogh exhibition launched in Paris in 2019 as “L’Atelier des Lumieres.” The exhibition played in Toronto, Canada before coming to 20 U.S. cities this year.

Mirrors cover pillars in the space, magnifying millions of pixels projected onto walls and floors. You might call this the funhouse approach to displaying art but it does offer a dash of context.

Ten long, tall banners festoon the entryway, each imprinted with a particular painting plus a bit of text about Van Gogh’s state of mind when he created it. They are worth reading before or after the show.

As the music and images envelop you, Van Gogh’s vivid scenes of the French countryside and villages appear and disappear slowly. Green leaves grow, followed by purple and white irises. There are delicate almond blossoms, olive groves and a brief encounter with Joseph Roulin, a bearded French postman dressed in a deep blue uniform.

The artist’s face in one of his 30 self-portraits is reflected in the inky black water of his painting, “Starry Night over the Rhone.” Another self-portrait shows him wearing a straw hat decorated with burning candles.

A Bible resting on a table, its pages turning, symbolizes the artist’s late father, a stern pastor in the Dutch Reformed church. The two men had a tense relationship. Van Gogh used blacks, browns and grays to capture the Netherlands, where he was born.

After he moved to France, where he was influenced by the Impressionists, Van Gogh began using brighter colors. As French chanteuse Edith Piaf sings, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (No, I have no regrets), images of French farmers working in the fields fill the cavernous room.

Undoubtedly, among Van Gogh’s greatest regrets were two ill-fated romances, one with a widow and another with a prostitute. Painting, he wrote to his brother, Theo, became his home and solace. It’s also regrettable that he did not live to see the universal appeal of his work.

In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris, sharing an apartment with his brother in Montmartre, a hilltop Paris neighborhood where the two men enjoyed a great view of the city. In the last 10 years of his life, Van Gogh painted some of his best known works in France.

The show’s colorful climax feels like visual fireworks and is accompanied by the brassy “Pictures At An Exhibition,” a classical composition by Modest Mussorgsky.

Depending on your viewpoint, this immersion into Van Gogh’s canvases can be a dizzying or mesmerizing experience. It’s especially interesting if you are curious how art is exhibited and marketed now.

Predictably, this immersive Van Gogh show is merchandised to the max in the gift shop outside the exhibition space. I stopped looking when I spied a yoga mat, imprinted with the artist’s work, for $70. No, thank you, or, as the French say, non, merci. Tickets start at $40 off-peak and $55 at peak times at www.vangoghpittsburgh.com.

The “Immersive Van Gogh” is just one way to see the artist’s interpretation of his natural surroundings and the French countryside that inspired him. To absorb and appreciate the subtlety of his brushstrokes, use of color and composition, it’s essential to look at real paintings in museums. There’s no good substitute for that experience.

The Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland has three works by Van Gogh — “Wheat Fields After the Rain,” “Le Moulin de la Galette” and a portrait of Dr. Paul Gachet, a physician who treated the artist in 1890. The first two are on view.

Farther afield, and just a bit more than a two-hour drive, is the Cleveland Museum of Art, where four works by Van Gogh are on display. While in Saint-Remy, France, in 1889, Van Gogh painted “The Large Plane Trees,” a picture of men mending a village road.

Another excellent painting is “Two Poplars in the Alpilles” near Saint-Remy, also painted in 1889, the year Van Gogh was treated in that town’s hospital for mental illness. Also on view is the artist’s only etching, showing Dr. Gachet puffing on his pipe. The physician treated the artist in the months before Van Gogh died by suicide. Finally, there is “Landscape with Wheelbarrow,” a watercolor that shows Van Gogh’s growing mastery of that particular genre.

Marylynne Pitz is a Pittsburgh-based, freelance arts journalist. Contact her at mlpitz27@gmail.com.

First Published: November 3, 2021, 3:07 p.m.