Opening Always the last step - beyond the paradox
Saturday 25 February 2012, Chiellerie Gallery, Amsterdam
After the musical beginnings, it was time to talk art. Mick had invited three brilliant, young people to discuss the Meta-art of Marianne Schuit, the Junior Critics. And critical they were, Menso Molendijk, Lisa Ribbeling and Freya Frericks! Like adult critics they did not spare the feelings of Mick and told him that some of his favorites could not stand their critical insights...
At last, the Meta-paintings of Marianne Schuit got into the open.
To Mick van Schooneveld the Meta-art of Marianne Schuit may be entirely mature and thoroughly profound, he knows very well Meta-art comes from a mind still as open as the mind of a young child. And so during the opening programme of Always the last step - beyond the paradox it was youth bringing in its vitality and openness.
There was magic in the air from the start: Quartetto Maggiolata played a string quartet of Haydn. The fiery spirit of the young musicians drifted through the open door of the gallery to the typical Amsterdam canal and bewitched even neutral passers-by. Quartetto Maggiolata is led by Holland’s most celebrated violin teacher, Coosje Wijzenbeek, who once teached Holland’s most famous violinist of this moment, Janine Jansen.
Quartetto Maggiolata plays Haydn (1st violin: Mayu Konoye, 2nd violin: Elisa Dijkstra, viola: Elisa-Karen Tavenier, cello: Hadewych van Gent)
Junior Critic Lisa Ribbeling speaks about the extraordinary use of colours by Marianne Schuit...
Junior Critics: in what direction will contemporary art develop itself?
After a second performance of the Quartetto Maggiolata, Mick van Schooneveld held his opening speech. To the surprise of the audience he told that it was curly hair that had gathered everybody at the opening of Always the last step. If Marianne Schuit would not have liked his long culry hair, which he had when he was a young man of 17, Mick would never have been aware of the art of Marianne Schuit and there would never have been an exhibition in the Chiellerie Gallery under his guidance...
More seriously, Mick van Schooneveld spoke about the truly limitless art of Marianne Schuit: “Where someone like Simon Schama is able to even take the art of Mark Rothko more or less in the palm of his hand, nobody will ever take the art of Marianne Schuit in the palm of his hand! Every time you think you have reached the final horizon in her art, there will be a new horizon beyond it...”
“You and I, we will never find the final horizon in the art of Marianne Schuit.”
Discussion after the opening speech: “What does it mean?”
“Mick, what did you mean by: in fact we experience the flow of time in the paintings of Marianne Schuit?”
One remarkable thing about the opening: people did not stop talking about the art of Marianne Schuit. Time and again they took other people to their favourites to talk about what made them special to them.
This too contributed, besides the vitality of youth, to a very lively atmosphere, in which the art stayed the main subject all the time.
But where was the Meta-artist? When the audience gathered around Mick, Marianne Schuit was nowhere to be found. Mick told: “However the Meta-art of Marianne Schuit may seem well thought-of, essentially it is all-intuitive. And however Marianne Schuit does not know any fear whatsoever concerning her Meta-art, there is one fear that keeps her away from the opening programme: the fear that she will become infuenced by what I and the Junior Critics will say about her work. The fear that this will make her think of her work, in stead of letting it simply come to her as it comes...”
And so Marianne Schuit only made her entrance when all was said and done.
“Marianne, to art in general and to your Meta-art in particular!”
Collectors Pim Fris and Joop van Wieringen discuss the ‘ins and outs’ of the art of Marianne Schuit
Jan van Westerlaak discusses the transition from figuratively painting to abstract painting with Marianne Schuit
Marianne Schuit is a music lover pur sang, and so it was obvious that there would be quite a lot of live music at the opening. A very special kind of live music was performed by Tomas Fris, aka Beat Unique, who plays an extraordinary instrument, the hang. The hang is a melodic percussion instrument which produces a very atmospheric sound. At the end of the opening its sound contributed very well to the atmosphere of artistic contemplation all around in the Chiellerie Gallery.
Tomas Fris plays the hang
And then there was this most remarkable change of plan:
However Mick van Schooneveld had thoroughly prepared a well written opening speech - which was even put on this website... -, at the very last moment he choose to speak ‘straight from the heart’. And so he did. And so he did not say all he wanted/needed to say, but what he said touched the art loving hearts and minds of the people in the audience probably much more than his well prepared opening speech would have done. And in this way he honoured the entirely free spirit of the art of Marianne Schuit much better than he would have done with the above mentioned speech.
But... to those of you who really want to know why the art of Marianne Schuit is so damn extraordinary, you can read the original opening speech at
Always the last step - beyond the paradox
and
I thank everybody who made this great happening possible! It was a very inspiring next step in the ongoing enterprise of bringing the extraordinary Meta-art of Marianne Schuit to the attention of art lovers where ever they may be.
Mick van Schooneveld
A young artist is born
The opening on You tube (Dutch spoken):