her intended subversion, effectively warning of lurking ironies, Skyllas never felt the need to drop clues, but instead simply reinvented his sources as he saw fit—without irony—instilling in his viewers, more often than not, a pervasive sense of cultural déjà vu. As a self-taught artist who was deeply engaged with the world of images, Skyllas forces us to recognize the limited thinking behind our categories. As Michael Hall once put it, Skyllas's work "knocked on a lot of doors, assaulted a lot of assumptions, challenged a lot of stereotypes in folk and fine art—it built and burned bridges at the same time."7 But artists like Skyllas do more than simply challenge limited categories; like undetected computer viruses, they hover in our seemingly fail-safe systems, patiently waiting to dissolve our false sense of order.* Jenzfer P. Borum is currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the City University ofNew York's Graduate Center. She has contributed to the recently published Folk Erotica, by Milton Simpson, has writtenfor Raw Vision, the New Art Examiner, and this publication, and is a regular contributor to Artforum magazine.
JOHN F. KENNEDY c. 1960s Oil on canvas 301 / 4 24/ 1 4" Courtesy Phyllis Kind Gallery
was to be his greatest masterwork:"My sweetest dream in this life is to do a large painting of the Last Supper for the American people.... Unfortunately, this dream has not come any closer to realization."15 A number of pencil sketches exist, drawn on the kind of long paper scrolls commonly used for architectural plans, providing a very clear idea of what the painting might have looked like, had it ever been completed. Two complete sketches—one measuring eight feet by twelve feet, the other sixteen by thirtytwo—as well as several others used to work out the details of the architectural setting confirm that the prototype for this painting was indeed Da Vinci's fresco in Milan. Painstakingly detailed measurements indicate the immense scale—at least double the size of the sketches, but variable, depending on the patron's wishes—that this painting might have achieved. Combining a number of genres—still life, portrait, landscape, and religious—this last Supper would have been a grand summary of Skyllas's artistic career. Recognizing Skyllas not as a bumbling naïf but as a postmodern artist in his own right—autodidactic or not— demands a collective leap of faith for fans of self-taught art. After all, postmodernism has been designated as the enemy of the alleged tabula rasa of the contemporary self-taught artist, usually by those who fear or do not care to understand it. But this condescending, nostalgic notion held by those Tom Patterson has called the field's "Bandwagon Reactionaries"6 has little bearing on reality—consider Eddie Arning's cigarette ads, William Hawkins's clever pop-cultural collages, Bessie Harvey's alchemical elevation of decorative kitsch baubles to the sublime, and Thornton Dial's sophisticated cultural commentary. Postmodernism as a cultural attitude is not simply the province of theorywise M.F.A.s, nor does it necessarily entail the nihilistic, critique-cum-ritual murder of art-historical greats it has unrealistically become associated with. Skyllas's unique eclecticism is less a self-conscious critique of culture than a systematic reclaiming of it, certainly not as a political project, but as an act of love. And whereas the critical postmodernist appropriator always clues the viewer in to his or
NOTES 1 Michael and Julie Hall,"Transmitters: A Dialogue on the Isolate Artist in America," in Transmitters: The Isolate Artist in America (Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Art, 1981), p. 50. 2 Ibid. 3 Attesting to the significant role Skyllas has played in the evolution of the Hall Collection, Michael Hall has claimed that the work speaks to the "connections emerging between the world of folk art and the contemporary fine art world." Quoted in Russell Bowman,"An Interview with Michael D. Hall," in Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection ofAmerican Folk Art(Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1993), p. 32. 4 Russell Bowman,"Looking to the Outside: Art in Chicago, 1945-75," in Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 151. 5 Drossos P. Skyllas,"The Last Supper"(typed statement courtesy of the Phyllis Kind Gallery). 6 Ibid. 7 William Bengston, director, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, telephone interview with author, summer 1994. This number differs from the popularly cited estimate of thirty-five. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Randall Morris,"Regarding Culture: Self-Taught Ethics," New Art Examiner, vol. 22, no. 1 (September 1994): 16-21. 11 Ibid., p. 19. 12 Sigmund Freud,"The Uncanny," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, vol. XVII(London: Hogarth Press, 19171919), p. 250. 13 Michael and Julie Hall,"Transmitters," p. 52. 14 This painting is reproduced in Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Encyclopedia of TwentiethCentury American Folk Art and Artists(New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), pp. 280-281. 15 Skyllas,"The Last Supper." 16 Tom Patterson,"Bandwagon Reactionaries and Barricade Defenders: Impediments to the Evolution of a Much Contested Field," New Art Examiner, vol. 22, no. 1 (September 1994): 22-26. 17 Bowman,"An Interview with Michael D. Hall," p. 32.
WINTER 1994/95 FOLK ART 41