Field trip: Son et Lumiere, Twenty-First-Century Style
Rendering of Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion at the Hall des Lumières, New York. At center is Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Klimt (1862–1918), 1907, with Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II, 1912, duplicated on either side of the entrance to the space. All photographs and renderings courtesy of Hall des Lumières, © Culturespaces. In terms of a cultural trend, something possibly important is afoot in a spectacle titled Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion, which recently opened in lower Manhattan at the Hall des Lumières. Every day, hundreds, even thousands of people pay upwards of thirty-five dollars to spend an hour in a darkened space, looking not at original art but at digitized reproductions of Klimt paintings projected across the interior walls of the abandoned, century-old Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank at 49 Chambers Street. These images dance and swell and vanish as suddenly as they appear, to the rather loud accompaniment of Beethoven, Puccini, and Debussy. Visitors, meanwhile, stand or pace about or, most commonly, sit on the floor, sharing the “experience” with scores of other similarly enraptured spectators. The impresarios responsible for this son et lumière extravaganza are Bruno Monnier, CEO of Culturespaces, a Paris-based firm that describes itself as “the leading private cultural operator,” and Gianfranco Ianuzzi, a seventy-five-year-old Venetian digital artist. Together the pair have been responsible for similar exhibitions devoted to Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, among others. Comparable spectacles have been staged in locations as diverse as Paris, Amsterdam, Seoul, and Dubai. Rendering of the interior of the Hall des Lumières. There is an element of almost barbaric gorgeousness to the present show, which does full justice to the exotic, neo-byzantine spirit in which Klimt created his