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Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey PDF

227 Pages·2022·27.131 MB·English
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METRICS OF MODERNITY 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd ii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK HAS BEEN AIDED BY A GRANT FROM THE MILLARD MEISS PUBLICATION FUND OF CAA. MM THE PUBLISHER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS FOUNDATION GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF FURTHERMORE, A PROGRAM OF THE J. M. KAPLAN FUND, IN MAKING THIS BOOK POSSIBLE. THE PUBLISHER GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE LITERATI CIRCLE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS FOUNDATION, WHOSE MEMBERS ARE: MICHELLE AND BILL LERACH MELONY AND ADAM LEWIS FRED LEVIN JUDITH AND KIM MAXWELL MARGARET PILLSBURY SHARON SIMPSON PETER J. AND CHINAMI S. STERN 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd iiii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM METRICS OF MODERNITY Art and Development in Postwar Turkey Sarah-Neel Smith UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd iiiiii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM University of California Press Oakland, California © 2022 by Sarah-Neel Smith Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on fi le at the Library of Congress. isbn 978-0-520-38341-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-38592-4 (ebook) Printed in Malaysia 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd iivv 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM CONTENTS Acknowledgments / vii Introduction. Art and Development: A New Framework for Postwar Art / 1 1. The Semiperipheral Art Gallery: Gallery Maya, Istanbul / 43 2. Democratic Abstractions: Bülent Ecevit on Art and Politics / 69 3. “The First Coup in the Turkish Art World”: The Developing Turkey Competition of 1954 / 99 4. The Artist as Agent of Development: Füreya Koral between Turkey and the United States / 125 Conclusion. Building Istanbul Modern: Art and Development in a Twenty-First-Century Museum / 155 Notes / 167 Bibliography / 191 List of Illustrations / 207 Index / 209 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd vv 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd vvii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I STARTED WRITING THIS BOOK the fi rst week of September 2001, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. I was fi fteen years old and had just arrived in Ankara, Turkey, for a year as an exchange student. I knew about ten words of Turkish. The two most impor- tant ones were “inecek var!” That’s the phrase I shouted at the top of my lungs around eight each morning as the blue and white min- ibus I had caught at Kızılay Square approached Ankara Anadolu Güzel Sanatlar Lisesi, the fi ne arts high school where I was enrolled for the year. It translates, roughly, to “let me out!” and remains to this day one of my most important language skills. Bülent Ecevit was prime minister. The Turkish economy had just collapsed, and the lira was valued at 1.5 million to the dollar. The attacks of September 11 happened one week later, and I spent the next year watching from afar, and through the fi lter of the Turkish media, as my home country was irrevocably transformed while my adopted country lurched through a series of economic and political crises. Eleven years later I found myself passing by my former Ankara high school on my way to visit Bülent Ecevit’s widow, Rahşan Ecevit, and her sister Asude Aral. I was there to record their memories of vii 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd vviiii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM the midcentury art scene as part of my research for a PhD dissertation on modern Turk- ish art. We drank tea, pored over old newspaper clippings, and discussed the latest epi- sode of Mühteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnifi cent Century), a TV show set in the Ottoman court, in the company of a litter of kittens. Though I had begun grad school imagining hours spent in dusty archives and neatly organized museum collections, this, I quickly learned, was more often what research looked like. And it depended almost entirely on the kind- ness of strangers. Rahşan and Asude Hanım were two of several dozen individuals in Turkey who made this book possible, starting with the Mengüç family, who fed and housed me through 2001 and 2002. Many others shared stories, contacts, and personal archives as I endea- vored to piece together a picture of 1950s Turkey while conducting dissertation research between 2010 and 2012. These included Fersa Acar, Filiz Ali, Ahmet Altınok, Adnan Çoker, Yahşi Baraz, Emel Batu, Metin Deniz, Amélie Edgü and Ayşe Gür at the Milli Reasürans Sanat Galerisi, Cliff ord Endres, Osman Erden, Turan Erol, Oğuz Erten, Jale Erzen, Hughette and Osman Eyüboğlu, Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Azra and Esra Genim, Mine Haydaroğlu and Abdullah Gül at the Yapıkredi Bank Archive, Ali Teoman and Semra Germaner, Melda Kaptana, Bediz Koz, Kaya Özsezgin, Ferhat Özgür, Mine Söğüt, Yusuf Taktak, and the entire team at SALT, including Lorans Baruh, Serkan Ors, Meriç Öner, and the wonderful Sezin Romi. In Istanbul, Ruşen Aktaş, HG Masters, Zeynep Öz, Merve Ünsal, and Didem Özbek and Osman Bozkurt were a warm and supportive com- munity who helped keep the dissertation blues at bay. Many of these individuals later provided images for the present volume: Sara Koral Aykar deserves special thanks on this front. This book would not exist without the support of key mentors who encouraged me to pursue my interest in Turkish modernism at a moment when it was far from main- stream. Mentors in the Department of Art, the French Department, and the Fellow- ships Program at Smith College set me on this path as an undergraduate. Vasıf Kortun helped keep me on it through the simple act of taking me seriously during the transi- tional postgrad years. Esra Akcan and Saloni Mathur, my primary academic advisor, carried me through the seven years of grad school with their incisive critical feedback and steadying presence. The friendship and guidance of Ian Bourland and Rebecca Brown have been the highlight of the most recent stage of this journey, as I trans- formed the dissertation into a book in Baltimore. Conversations and collaborations with Farah Aksoy, Nisa Ari, Nicholas Danforth, Chad Elias, Jim Ryan, Ceren Özpınar, and Alex Dika Seggerman energized the project at key junctures. Friends near and far provided endless moral support, especially Alessan- dra Amin, Jamin An, Nora Beckman, Meg Bernstein, Holly Harrison, Dana Logan, Julia McHugh, Suzy Newbury, Kate Reed Petty and Oliver Baranczyk, Naomi Pitamber, and Christine Robinson. The team behind the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA)—including Jessica Gerschultz, Anneka Lenssen, Dina Ramadan, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout—have inspired and sustained viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd vviiiiii 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM my work for over a decade, while one of the greatest joys of the last few years has been exploring new art historical territory in the company of the brilliant Duygu Demir. I reserve special thanks for Natilee Harren, who read countless drafts, multiple times. At this point she probably knows more about Turkish modernism than anyone really should. Thanks, too, are due to my colleagues in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art, for welcoming me into their warm community, to MICA’s Offi ce of Research for a Marcella Brenner Grant which helped off set the costs of acquiring images, and to the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) for the 2018 fellowship that enabled the completion of this book. Hollianna Bryan and Fred Leise made the fi nal phases of proofreading and indexing a breeze. At the University of California Press, Archna Patel, Jessica Moll, Claudia Smelser, and Athena Lakri have taken the manuscript from unwieldy Word document to a beautiful fi nished product. To my family, who has also been writing this book since 2001, go my greatest thanks: Candace, Neel, and Annecca; Sylvia, Ellen, and Linda; Judy and David; my partner, John; and the entire Cardellino clan. My grandparents Shelley and Jack won’t see the fi nal version, but I’m sure they would have gotten a kick out of this attempt at a his- torical account of the 1950s, the decade when they came of age. This book is dedicated to them. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd iixx 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM 6633113311iinntt..iinndddd xx 2211--0099--0011 11::5599 PPMM

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