The Audacity of Art
The other day I happened to speak with an American art collector who knew Turkey well and asked her whether she was here to buy Turkish art. No, she replied, Turkish art hadn’t matured to the level that it could be collected for galleries and museums. Now, I had recently been to MOMA in New York and remember being flabbergasted by what appeared to be nothing more than a pink board tilted against the wall. Audacity seems to be the name of the game, I thought. Being there first, regardless of where that is. Surely somewhere there are audacious Turkish artists. There are certain famous Turkish artists of the twentieth century who painted atmospheric Istanbul scenes, peasants, the literati. I remember with particular pleasure an artist whose abstract canvases always incorporated trademark golden insects and another who caught the atmosphere of the crowds on the ubiquitous ferries. But apparently to the global art world, this is derivative of European art. Turkish art has not been audacious or inventive enough.
Some of the background to this must be the Islamic prohibition on depicting the human form (lest it be worshipped) that shaped Ottoman art for hundreds of years. The ban was frequently violated, as the wise Malik points out in The Abyssinian Proof, especially in miniature paintings recording the personalities and doings of the wealthy and powerful. Pre-republican Turkey, in other words, had a number of powerful artistic traditions ranging from abstract design (expressed, for instance, in remarkable calligraphy and tile- and needlework) to figurative art that incorporated Persian and other styles. By the end of the nineteenth century, the first European style art schools were opening and Ottomans like Osman Hamdi Bey (who was a real historical figure as well as a character in my novel) went to Paris to study painting in the European style. Hamdi Bey’s paintings are famous in Turkey and at least one of them can be seen at Istanbul’s MOMA. He paints like the European Orientalist masters, but treats Ottoman themes honestly. Hamdi Bey’s odalisque lies on a divan reading a book! But the new Republic required new Western art and music. Fusion was popular for a while, then replaced by modernism. Only recently has the Ottoman heritage regained some popularity and respect, although in terms of art that seems to be primarily in the form of reproductions for the market.
Click here for a site showing some of Hamdi Bey’s art.
In the spirit of this discussion, I include a link to the Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol’s provocative article about the problem with Turkish art. He argues that present-day Turks are so conflicted about their heritage (he calls it self-hatred) that they pull their punches when it comes to art, afraid to use calligraphy because that will make them seem religious, and so on. If they paint village scenes, they can be accused of producing kitsch or being Orientalist (or even, I have found, “self-Orientalist”).
In such a situation, art becomes hostage to politics and audacity is allowed only within predictable channels.