30 may 2023, Yves Joris
The fascinating fleetingness of a fishy smell or a humorous look at the work of Servaas Schoone
Art doesn't need to be serious. Artist Servaas Schoone proves this by taking visitors on a journey through art history based on 'fish'. Gert Junes, gallery owner of Art Partout on Het Eilandje in Antwerp is a fervent advocate of Servaas' work. The fascinating fleetingness of a fishy smell or a humorous look at the work of Servaas Schoone. At the end of this interview, there was no doubt in my mind: there is absolutely no reason not to visit this expo.
Servaas Schoone, Fish-Air, Art Partout
I wonder how casual passers-by and residents have responded to the white cube gallery, currently dominated by a bright orange colour that is usually only seen during times of football madness. Gallerist Gert Junes assures me that the reactions are mostly positive, but above all, curious. “With one exception,” laughs Gert, “and that person was under the impression that a fish shop had opened here.”
A brief look at the objects on display taps into the entire canon of art history and immediately sparks an enthusiasm that has not diminished to this day. I have lain awake half the night and written dozens of opening paragraphs in my head in which Dali, Koons, Warhol and even Frans Snijders – like whirling dervishes – ultimately merged into La Danse by Matisse.
Servaas Schoone, Special offer 1991, Art Partout
Who the f… is Servaas Schoone?
Indeed, who is this artist who has opened a can full of associations for me? Servaas (1950-2001), who died young, was a visual artist who lived and worked in Hoorn in the Netherlands. His brother and sister describe him as a troublesome child who was easily bored unless he could draw or keep himself busy tinkering with electronics. His drawings impressed at school, but he opted for a technical education because it brought bread to the table. After a few years, he gave up and started painting. To learn to master a style, he copied the Old Masters, yet still sought his own way, which resulted in paintings in a purely Fauvist style. As soon as he achieved success, however, he switched to a different artistic direction. Painting gave way to video and video to installations, and so on. The only common thread running through his work was its simplicity, dynamism and humour.
It is perhaps that subcutaneous, restrained yet playful dynamic that makes Art Partout nothing short of an art book. The cans with a fishy smell not only make reference to Andy Warhol, but filled with a fishy smell, also make reference to Duchamp and his ready-made Air de Paris, in which he filled glass balloons with air from the City of Light. Manzoni's canned Merde d'Artista is also referenced. The cans are offered in limited series to keep prices low – Filliou's multiples? Using the colour orange? Monochromaticity lurks around the corner. Everything is doused with a linguistic game that Magritte, Broodthaers and the aforementioned Duchamp would have appreciated.
Int Fi$h-handel Servaas &Zn.
Artist with a mercantile soul
In the wake of such artists as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Res Ingold and Aldo Spoldi, Servaas founded Int Fi$hhandel Servaas & Zn. It was an obvious choice, as Servaas loved fish and his commercial-artistic spirit pushed him in that direction. Canned fish smell, fish perfume and fish beer arose from his creativity. You can admire the result through June 25 at Art Partout. The canned fish smell eagerly found its way into museums and collections. Galleries offering the work were promptly renamed franchisees or branches of his 'company' by Servaas. During an art fair in Cologne, he converted the gallery stand into a fish stall to sell fresh herring under the banner 'Art is what you eat', much to the frustration of the caterers at the event, who complained that Servaas did not have to meet the same strict hygiene requirements as they did. The visitors enjoyed the original concept. Hilarity and controversy often go hand in hand in his work.
Servaas Schoone, Fish Paint (S91101), 1991, Art Partout
A child of the future
A visionary? Ahead of his time? The truth may lie somewhere in between. After all, Servaas looked much further than his own art. As a teacher at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, he also ensured that his students could do internships at various companies through the BAS (Business Art Stageplan) project. According to Servaas, they would not only learn to look at products with different eyes, but would also learn how the business world works, an experience students could certainly use in developing their artistic career, even if it cost the teacher every effort to convince them of the usefulness of this internship.
But the environment was also important to him and Servaas naturally interpreted this involvement in his own way. In 1993, for example, he created the 'Environmental Art Prize', which he awarded to Mazda Cars that same year for the development of the hydrogen rotary engine. That was thirty years ago. Servaas was also closely involved in the New Positive Initiative in which prisoners were guided towards a new life after their imprisonment.
Perhaps one of Servaas's best stunts in the early 1990s was to obtain the art property rights to all the world's oceans, thereby elevating the sea to a work of art. With the campaign 'THE SEA CRIES', he drew attention to the poor quality of the oceans even back then. People were given the opportunity to purchase part of the ocean. Thirty years later, we refer to this as fractional art buying or NFTs.
Defining Servaas Schoone within art history would be discrediting the man. With Fish Air, Art Partout portrays a playful aspect of his (too) short artistic life, one that I feel deserves even more attention.
Servaas Schoone, Fish-Air, Art Partout
