Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey

227 Pages·2022·27.131 MB·English

by  Sarah-Neel Smith

METRICS OF MODERNITY
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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
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METRICS OF MODERNITY
Art and Development in Postwar Turkey
Sarah-Neel Smith
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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