BRUSSELS.- For more than three decades, Anne-Marie Schneider has revealed to us a dense story, constantly renewed, drawn with a scalpel affirming to our astonished eyes, like a private diary open without detours or restraint, the diversity of her impressions, the liveliness of her feelings, the pain of her disturbed ideas in the continuation of her drawings. These enabled her to write only with words in order to better perceive through successive images her implementation of essentially visual snapshots, all of which escape pre-established standards of representation or figuration.
Drawing is the world (...); this is the world I am facing; it is also that of others.
And indeed, each of her drawings seems to spring from the depth of her sensitivity, with the power of gushing from an inexhaustible source, to show, express, overflow with unexpected perceptions and meanings and yet, each time, tracing with an identical constancy of the signified of each of the figures that Anne-Marie Schneider affirms on paper. Endlessly, she reveals the cohesion of the outline of each of her works, as well as the coherence of their diversity, the immediate effectiveness of her confrontation with the world, with others.
The concern that feeds her works is acute. The bodies are filled with tears encircled in black similar to briquettes, or on the contrary, empty and without faces are barely outlined by a few lines of bright colors. A few monochrome flat tints are enough for her to evoke other figures, such lonely automatons to which only large dorsal keys can give life. Likewise, she sculpts silhouettes suspended in front of the whiteness of the simple wall with a few electric wires.
The revelation of the suffering of the innermost is painful every time. But it is also contained, controlled, silent, generous beyond the accuracy of the features, allowing the perception of possible astonishment in the possible hope of appeasement of the world. So, the images of some old record players make resound the music of the stars and the imaginary of mythological beauty transcends bodies and grotesque figures.
FRAGILE UNBREAKABLE. These two words title the catalog of her exhibition at the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 2003, which opens with the full-page portrait of Anne-Marie Schneider, immediately followed by her introductory text from which are extracted here the quotations in italics. This portrait reflects her words. The artist looks at us, straight in our eyes, precisely, deeply in front of two large drawings of hands. She holds in her arms and outstretched fingers a few informal soft toys, with long legs and tails, of uniform colors. Her smile seems to fade.
Her hands are large, like those of an accomplished pianist. But the artist, although having practiced the violin before her training in fine arts, does not play a well tempered keyboard. She never stops drawing and specifying the situations and experiences that cross and nourish her affects tirelessly, to give us an idea of the main questions, questions or emotions that she encourages us to share, without break or respite to question our presence in the world.
Michel Baudson (aica-icom)
March 2020
