Demosthenis Skoulakis -A Retrospective: Rewritings

Demosthenis Skoulakis - A Retrospective: Rewritings,

at the Benaki, Pireos, Athens.

We had such fun looking at these paintings!

'One of Modernism's later children, as I grew up, I felt unbearably smothered by the embrace of … my father. I felt it was an obstacle to my artistic development, as it suggested old, commonplace ideas under 'new' but recognisable masks. Thus a need for a definitive clearing of accounts slowly started being born within me. The emotional equivalent of Freud's 'murder of the father'. 

But, despite the awareness of the need for 'patricide', I was still tied to him. Still fascinated by the glamour of the adventure and myths of modernism, the idea of 'murder' was made not only cumbersome and painful, but also impossible in its realisation.

In the summer of 1977, looking at a photo of Duchamp's Fountain, I felt I was at a starting point, except that my path was in the opposite direction. I painted again the Fountain … Urinal! The 'father' was finally DEAD. My goal is not to 'hit' the painting of the century, but the critical view and review of all the elements that were distorted or lost in 80 years'.

Iris and Goldfish (Van Gogh - Matisse), 2002, (oil on canvas)

The Players, 2000, (oil and collage on paper)

The Gamble and the Myth of Images II, 1998, (oil on canvas)

Variation on Chardin's House of Cards II, 2000, (oil on canvas)

The Gamble and Myth of Images (The Lithographs of Toulouse Lautrec), 2001, (oil on canvas)

July 27th 1890, 1998, (oil on canvas)

The Fountain or What Intervened Between Ingres and Duchamp, 1997-98, (oil on canvas)

Duchamp as … the Mona Lisa, 1998, (oil on canvas)

Piss-Art, 1998, (oil on canvas)

David and Goliath II, 1997-2001,  (oil on canvas)

Duchamp and the Bicycle Wheel, 1998, (oil on canvas)

Anatomy Lesson on Picasso Cubistic Nude, 1999, (oil on canvas)

Variation on Guernica in Relation to the US War in Iraq, 2003, (oil on canvas)

The Art of Painting up until the … Boogie-Woogie, 1999, (oil on canvas)

The Lace Maker II, 2000, (oil on canvas)

The Lace Maker I, 2000, (oil on canvas)

Sphinx - Homage to Francis Bacon, 1998, (oil on canvas)

Warhol Soup, 1997-98, (oil on canvas)

The Unknown Dead, (variation on Mategna), 2001, (oil on canvas)

The Modernisation of War, 1999, (oil on canvas)

Orthodox Interior, (Pierro de la Francesca - Erro), 2001-02, (oil on canvas)

Homage to Frida Kahlo, 1997, (oil on canvas)