The challenge, should you be lucky enough to land an overnight stay in the Art Institute’s River North re-creation of Van Gogh’s bedroom, will be to avoid saying the obvious things relating to the troubled artist’s biography.
You cannot, for instance, tell your partner, repeatedly, that you are “all ears,” because, well, divorce.
And you cannot say that it costs “an arm and a leg” to stay there because this little stroke of promotional inspiration, available (although not right now) through Airbnb and meant to tout the museum’s groundbreaking new exhibition, “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms,” is only $10 a night, including tickets to the show.
You are free, however, to join the social media hordes in marveling at the likeness that has been accomplished, a standard-issue contemporary condo bedroom turned into the room you see when you look at the Art Institute’s copy of “The Bedroom,” arguably one of the most famous sleeping quarters in art history.
Down Michigan Avenue at the museum, the exhibition has brought the three versions Vincent Van Gogh painted of “The Bedroom” together for the first time in North America, in a show that opens Sunday and explores how significant the image was to the Dutch painter as an idealized representation of an ever-elusive home.
Farther north and a few blocks west of Michigan, there is the 3-D contemporary mock-up of the room, exacting right down to the thick blue paint on the walls and the chartreuse-green cast to the wood floor.
“It’s sort of crazy how excited people are over the project,” said Glenn Ragaishis, who oversaw the room’s fabrication at Ravenswood Studio, the Lincolnwood firm that, more typically, builds sets for Lyric Opera and other theater companies.
But Ravenswood’s own staff artists were pretty excited, too, he said. They made the bed just so, out of poplar, although it is a double rather than Van Gogh’s more narrow, less optimistic sleeping berth. They hung the threadbare towel on a hook on one wall and blue artist’s smock on another. They made a fake Van Gogh self-portrait to hang above the bed.
They even tried to re-create the artist’s slightly askew perspective on the room, not so much in the wall that slants inward at the ceiling — “we had to work with somebody being able to sleep in it,” said Ragaishis — but in the little bedside table.
“The top is not quite on square,” he said. “The legs are not exactly the same width. Those little details add up to make it believable.”
The bedroom loses some believability when you step back a bit and realize it is, essentially, a 10-by-12-foot theater set, a wood-and-canvas box, open at the ceiling and one end, fitted into the existing bedroom.
A little more faith is sacrificed in the walk-in closet off the hallway that leads to the bedroom and in the double-sink bathroom and stackable washer and dryer down the hall.
And you have to wonder what Van Gogh would make of the art that comes with the condo, a female figure outline in the living room signed by an artist named “Morrison,” and matching the size and color of the sofa.
But this being an entirely livable space, with cable and Wi-Fi and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, is part of the point of the promotion, too, which was suggested by the Art Institute’s ad agency, Leo Burnett, and will run through the exhibition’s May 10 closing. You can step into 1888, when Van Gogh moved to the little Yellow House in Arles, in the south of France, in hopes of establishing an artists’ colony. Or you can move back into a 29th floor apartment with balcony and window views overlooking the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s and Rainforest Cafe in 2016.
The first overnight guest, staying Sunday, will be Robby Sexton, the Art Institute’s social media manager. His goal, he said, when he writes about his stay for the Art Institute’s Facebook page and elsewhere, “will be to make people feel as jealous as possible.”
There are, to be sure, caveats to the deal: Only one night. Only two people. If you want to be faithful to Van Gogh, share the space with the Paul Gauguin figure in your life, someone who is more accomplished and better known in the same business that you are in. Invite your Gauguin. See how that goes.
For Van Gogh, the older artist’s two-month stay in the Yellow House bedroom adjacent to his ended in a fight, the infamous severed ear incident and the artist checking into an asylum. It was there he painted the second and third copies of “The Bedroom,” and it is that story, of exalted then dashed expectations for the room, that the exhibition tells with poignancy and great art.
Another caveat is that some of the room availabilities are being reserved for “social influencers,” artists and bloggers and the like who will share the story of staying there. The February room slots filled up almost as soon as the museum announced the rental, listed as “Van Gogh’s bedroom” on Airbnb, on Thursday. Watch the museum’s social media channels, officials said, to learn when new reservations can be made.
While you’re visiting, say, the Facebook page, you can also see what Sexton had to say about going Dutch artist in contemporary Chicago.
“I’m going to take as many photos as possible,” Sexton said. “I will probably feature myself, put some selfies up.”
Yes, selfies. In Van Gogh’s day, those would have taken longer to execute, and they were called “self-portraits.”
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
