Turkey

Turkey for Manifesta 2 Catalog

After the Second Istanbul Biennial in 1989, I wrote a review for an international journal. The review was never published but still encapsulates the situation: “The exhibition acknowledged the 1980s’ generation of Turkish Painting”.[1] Spoon-fed on international art magazines with glossy reproductions and flimsy articles (if they read them), the artists execute their paintings with a finish that reminds one of an art that is too much of the present and passé. Lacking a structural basis for articulating their work, not to mention the historical perspective of the artists they copy, their situation signifies that art in Turkey may be in a severe crisis. The crisis can only be overcome by seriously questioning the artists’ position within the time and space in which they are moving.” I also wrote, “A city purview would include a list of museums, alternative spaces, and contemporary art centres, right? Wrong. Istanbul has none of the above. One can see some of the world’s leading antiquities in the archaeological museum and tour the bizarrely hybrid Topkapi Palace after visiting St. Irene Church. Still, for contemporary art, you have to make do with galleries, art dealers’ places, and studios.” 

Well, painting in Turkey may long have been an antediluvian notion. Still, the crisis persists as it has shifted in a timely form from painting to neo-conceptual and installation-based work. The need for institutional support, discussion areas, and history education is still acute, mainly because art production has become integrated[2] into the Euro-American circuit and is being absorbed by it. 

Let’s retrace our steps. The third of the one-a-decade coups d’état of the Turkish Army in 1980 eradicated all vestiges of liberalism of the previous constitutions. The coup led to a cynical decade of apolitical and angst-ridden painting that later converged with imported neo-expressionism. A convergence occurred in terms of the “requirements of becoming middle-class,” and the predictable patterns of collecting it brought with it the acquisition of bad paintings and other works of dubious quality but of “national historical significance” (in other words, horrible paintings of the late 19th century and other old bric-a-brac). It dovetailing economic liberalization and the rise of a new moneyed class, 

Still, life was elsewhere. The growing self-awareness that could also be seen in the context of a culture becoming increasingly civic brought about a break from both the archaic institutions of the state (such as the Academy of Fine Arts) and the “market” (as well as the marketable), and a move towards more radicalized forms of art. It finally dawned on some artists that working and making a living with work were not precisely compatible; the latter would be detrimental to one’s work in Turkey. The Istanbul Biennial played an increasingly critical role in liberating the art scene from the “academy” and the grips of a provincial art scene.[3] The local scene was perceived as receiving modern authorial and authoritative, sprinkled with blatantly banal local touches.[4]  The Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest institution in the country and the primary provider of the community, has failed to produce more than a very few artists of interest in the last 10 years. This points to the demise of institutions that could not reform, reformulate, and recreate themselves. From the late 1980s onwards, since secondary and marginal institutions successfully challenged the monopoly of the Academy”,[5] all critical activity has adopted extra-institutional parameters. More than anything, this indicates the absence of civic and professional institutions independent of governmental divides and that the free enterprise of artists and individuals has begun to overcome that absence in a conservative society that has always preferred a selective and opportunistic application of the basic tenets of democracy.[6] 

The convergence of the dynamics of several artists and on-off art professionals returning from Europe and the United States of America was also critical. Not that there was not always a return, but this time, it had achieved a critical mass due to the intensity of globalization and the impetus of 1989. It should also be noted that during the dismal thirdworldism of the late 1970s, daily life was under the occupation of political terror. Turkey was intellectually, politically, and economically isolated by the embargo following the military intervention in Northern Cyprus, and it had already missed the possibilities of 1968 by brutalizing its children. The coup of 1980 had served to justify a retreat from the public domain, and the period between 1987-1997 (between the first and the fifth Istanbul Biennials) marked an unprecedented change, where an articulation occurred that was breathtaking, yet not too uncommon when seen in the global post-1989 context. Given the sheer gloss of the urban jungle, the superabundance of subcultural kitsch, political conflict, and all forms of radicalism, Turkey’s artists have tremendous ammunition to work with, which I doubt is being examined for its form and content. Also, having made connections, a few artists may have gone for the big time, but this is only the minimal condition for achievement. 

Notes: 

[1] This was in the context of an extensive section of the Biennial. It had taken place in the Military Museum 

[2] Consider, for example, the case of Ayse Erkman, Gulsun Karamustafa, and Hale Tenger, three female artists who live and work in Turkey and show predominantly in Europe and the United States. Of the three, Erkmen and Tenger participated in Manifesta 1. 

[3] The First Biennial took place in 1987, mainly due to the maverick efforts of Beral Madra, who also directed the second one in 1989. While it preceded the Johannesburg, Kwangju, and other new periodic international exhibitions, the Istanbul Biennial should be seen in local and global contexts as a jump-starter of a situation and integrationist mechanism between the local and the global. 

[4]  Such art is authorial because it claims a moral, cultural superiority over and above the society for which it is vaguely destined. 

[5] The Fine Arts Departments of Marmara University (Istanbul), 9 Eylul (Izmir), and the private Bilkent University in Ankara have been particularly vital, however erratic they may have been. 

[6] The exhibitions of the Turkish Avant-Garde, as they were called in the late 1980s, the exhibitions of Beral Madra and myself, the projects of Arhan Kayar that were alternative exhibitions to the Biennials, and several irregular events led by artists have been the main impetus of change and independent activity.