“Why do I draw paintings?” – April 2016
In this geography called Turkey, whenever art and especially painting is mentioned, two main schools have come to mind for long years.
Either those “who would come” in just the same way as the hat came from Kastamonu were looked or what would spring from the Anatolian territory grubbed under the leadership of the professors of “Language and History” Faculty was focused.
Since both schools share the same garden, students would lay eyes on one another at break times, and adapt themselves to the environment. Badges and complexes would be changed; nails would be cut and filed; and the road for the class would be taken. Students changing their classes would be seen frequently.
Time slipped by…
Other schools were established. Schools were used up. Professions not related to the school were acquired. While intending to different languages, different courses; finite personal formations entered into the era of “great terror and transformation” after passing through various stops in the collective adventure of the geography.
It was an enlightening and informative era to a great extent.
Afterwards, that first socialism to which both admirers and adversaries were unfair dissolved.
Nobody could pretend as if it had never happened.
Now, we came to the present day…
It is not possible anymore to understand someone’s school just by looking at the face or clothes.
Those hinting their pasts with their accents are warned askance.
Unfortunately, there are people who confuse speaking in an accent with “identity”.
Meanwhile, of course, nobody is as they were in the school. Our knowledge increased and our etiquette improved.
We are nobody’s fool…
Yes, now we are in the “present day”.
Here is the territory of the “new world order” from now on.
In these territories, the legislation of the culture which is commoditised with all of its elements; popular culture which knows no limits for its rise; and “cultural integration” which means painting all corners of the world in a single colour is in effect.[1]
Here it is, the art of painting is a constantly-changed provision in this legislation.
After all, “change” is a blind sword which has beheaded many concepts including change for a long time.
After all, in an environment where “those who accept everything on impulse without questioning” repeat what they objected to several months ago as a “new” thing again involuntarily and define them as “their own words and new things”[2], the bourgeois ideology heartily embraces everything jammed into the market.
Anyway, “After the culture is released to the market under the conditions of capitalism, ‘usage value” which includes such elements as quality, cultural satisfaction, purpose and reproduction gradually loses its significance.”[3]
The “new” which does not represent a real break is a conventional ambush in the market.
This is because of the fact that: “Petit bourgeois ideology always seeks novelty. Since it takes comfort in groundless and flimsy stories, it gets bored with them quickly. Thus, it is always in search of the “newer”. Still, petit bourgeois ideology has a more rooted feature contradicting with the aforementioned feature: its objection to change. Petit bourgeois likes stylistic novelty but feels awful apprehension in the face of a really different thing. For petit bourgeois, change must be only in appearance and basically the most beaten and oldest themes should be maintained.”[4]
The market is indifferent. Starting with the rayon of the slightly defective goods, it also has a place for the “leftist” products. Those carrying adaptive skills and vigilance of any nature in their genes have already taken their places by the “board” in the exchange market with their pens at hand.
For instance, those who got divorced from “socialist reality” and left socialism at “that” side tried to figure out which one would be more fruitful in painting market: either an “import substitution” oriented policy or “integration” fed by advance technology.
This is the picture of the present day. Our drawings hang on this wall and what is said is a rough depiction of the “material environment[5] of artistic production, circulation and consumption” in our day.
Now I want to sneak further “inside”. Of course, there is no “inside” independent from the “outside”. What I will say will be based on the detection and discussion of this truth.
The society is the sea of ideologies. As for ideologies, they are interpretation practices.
And, a fundamental function of ideology is to prevent those views “from the outside”. Thus, the attempt of surrounding a “view” produced within an ideological practice can transform into the production of new ideological views within new ideological practices.
As a result, the history is overstuffed with such ideologies related to the art. While supposedly attempting to refute, the most idealistic thoughts have been transferred even to Marxism.
Thus, the person who wants to place art in somewhere within life and his/her own life can get drowned in this enormous sea and in pursuit of high artistic delights.
In making the art and the life clear, surrounding and “ending” ideological views in a real sense is only possible with the production of scientific information concerning the matters addressed. When our field is in question, the activity that will render the production of scientific information possible by unveiling the ideological production practices is criticism. When the art of the past is in question, the carrier of the activity is art history which will work with the concepts of the science of history.
It is not possible for me to address the history of various thoughts produced in the field of art and the concepts generated in this history in depth. What I will do is to sneak into art with a materialistic understanding of information. However, it is necessary to list these warnings: “The history of the information of the object will continue changing independently from the object itself. In this respect, information is never absolute. However, this does not mean that human information is totally relative. We can choose a specific period of time and compare various information in this period. Then, we realize that one of them is more correct than the others. To the degree that we have the opportunity of testing our theories, we can also prove the correctness of a theory among its kind. Still, based on this proof, we cannot say that the information about this object is complete.”[6]
Yes, if the concrete forms of human thought are ideology, science and art, what are the distinctive features of art?
Artistic production takes place within art practice which is a societal/material practice. Its raw material is ideological practices. This raw material is not, of course, sand, clay and ore piles in front of the factories just as the word of “raw material” evokes; ideological practices are our lives.
In front of the artist, there are “artistic traditions” and “aesthetic customs” that the material development level of the society determines at various forms as the same and concurrent ideologies with this raw material. Here one can think of what each painter has received from the plastic tradition in which she/he produces. At the bottom of the ladder, each painter is others to a degree.
Actually, the art practice is the production of artistic products within these limits and as a confrontation with these limits. What makes this practice unique is exactly at this point: Not only ideological practice, which is the raw material, is transformed but also this work itself is the transformation of the data of the tradition. In other words, a new union of form and sense emerges in a manner which does not allow for considering “essence” and “form” separately at all and which absolutely refuses their division.
In such a perspective, there is no room for “creative” artists endowed with mystic powers. The artist acts as a coordinator in the intersection which was attempted to be explained above. And it is not possible to consider this practice as a “reflection” process under any circumstances.
Well then, is artistic production an ordinary one? The answer is no but it depends on the extent that it can produce a new and different sense/form from its confrontation with its raw material and tradition. However, if this does not happen, if it simply re-produces the “voice of the owner” by relying on the raw material of the production activity (ideological practices as the place/form for producing, re-producing and experiencing ideologies) and if it cannot maintain a line within tradition from where there are no steps back, it will not be meaningful to say “yes” to this question, as well.
As for artistic product, it is “commodity” just like any other product within the capitalist society. Its conditions for circulation and consumption are not different. Still, it differs from a bread, shoe and sock. As the phrase is, it is “radioactive”. It will affect if it is not jammed into a lead container for various protection reasons stemming from the producer or the product. With its nature preventing it from being simply consumed, it will incite the re-production potential in the consumers and try to dissuade them from their consuming positions and passive attitudes.
Anyway, does “good” art have any definition other than being able to make significant changes in the whole of sense/form; generating new questions and contributing to the generation of new questions; questioning and unsettling the ways of perception and comprehension and proposing new ones; and chasing after the saying of “all right” wherever it encounters? We can define its “bad” version by stepping backwards with these questions. “Bad” art is the art that uses the data of the given raw materials and traditions without transforming them, that allows its receiver to find what is expected and that does not interfere with the comfort she/he has as consumer.
As for such concepts as “beauty” and “value”: there is no “beauty” acceptable for each era, each period and each society. There are “beauty” ideologies which are the products of different ideological practices. “Artistic value” is not inherent in the work of art. “Just like the value of any object, its value shows up during its exchange for being consumed. The value of (a work of) art is not associated with the life that it “reflects” or outstanding aesthetic skill of its “creator” or certain “formal” inherent relations of (the work of) art. The value results from the relation that the work of art establishes with life and, via life, history.”[7]
I want to give some details about this point: If we define the monetary equivalent of the work of art which is “commodity” in capitalism as “real value”, the work of art has another “value” that shows to which questions and pursuits does it correspond and which needs does it meet either in a capitalist society or under non-capitalist circumstances. What is intended is that “this” value is extrinsic and “historical” as well. For instance, if the values attributed to a Renaissance painting or African mask by us and by the people of the society where it is produced are different, this is the difference between our attitudes towards the world. All in all, the product is the same product.
Following this general overview on art as a production practice and work of art, I want to pass on to my own production and, more directly, to painting.
There is a reality which has had examples throughout the history and will continue having: all interventions which emerge as individual or collective trends in the field of art are social attitude adoptions not restricted by their own fields. They are based on a holistic society project and human understanding.
When we look at the historical examples today, we can see these interventions more clearly when compared to their eras with their existences exceeding or falling behind their claims. On the other hand, works of art exist with their own realities which do not exactly correspond to the claims, fantasies and attitudes of their producers.
Every time the history is written today or in the view of every new intervention taking place today towards history, works of art become the object of the new writing, intervention with these concrete realities of them. The artist in history exists via his/her product. As for the product of the living artist, it exists via the identity of the artist. Perhaps, it will be more correct to say that the artist exists with his/her product “in our day” as well.
Living in our day is to live by adopting certain attitudes. Not believing in attitudes is also an attitude.
Now, my paintings are the paintings that a certain attitude produces. However, I should state once again that I do not regard attitude and actual painting identical.
What is this attitude?
I tried to mention briefly at the beginning of my speech. A new picture emerged in the period beginning with the 1980 military coup d’état which coincided with the developments in the world. Bourgeois ideology which declared the death of ideologies, art, science and politics carried out a destruction exceeding physical violence.
In this process where all definitions of being human were destroyed step by step and attempts were made to transform human beings into simple herd creatures, people who thought that had never become “individuals” in the past flocked into.
As they internalized the major spurt of the bourgeois ideology, they could not find the identities, which they lost while living, in their pasts, either. The fact that the past is always defective and what really matters is the will to complete has faded away.
The result is the common “hara-kiri” of the people who bluster themselves for the sake of being an “individual”.
These people lived 80s together with their twins. “Twins” are the people who cannot find a history for themselves and believe that there is not a life beyond the limits of their own bodies.
My paintings are the products of questioning these “human landscapes” and ideologies within an art practice. First of all, they are. If you did not get bored, I want to emphasize once again: questioning an artistic production is different from questioning things in other platforms. Transforming rightfulness based on an attitude into an artistic rightfulness is a quite different process. My products are not independent from my “words” but they are now within the life with their independent realities.
In the tradition of painting, similar questions, confrontations and similar periods have similar manifestations in the plastic language. When I look for my kins from history, I see Manierist paintings produced in the period from the beginning of the 16th century up to the 17th century, Manierist style, and expressionism at the beginning of the 20th century and German expressionists, in particular.
Of course, kinships are abstractions that should not be exaggerated very much.
Fundamental characteristic of these two painting styles is deformation which is the carrier of violence, bitterness, anger, grief and rebellion which, in painting, are roughly equivalent to giving prominence to the criticism of humanbeings and society and rejecting what is given and regarded natural. I want to pass on to another point now: Ideologies, philosophies and arts have histories, but ideology, philosophy and art does not have a history. The fundamental building units of the product on the two-dimensional plane that we call as painting (pattern, colour etc.) are always the same. Technological advancement does not require a qualitative transformation. The entire history of painting consists of various arrangements and combinations of these fundamental building units. The authenticity and historicity of the product is actually the authenticity and historicity of this arrangement/combination.
For instance, perspective was discovered when “individuality” gained a central importance at a certain stage of the European history. In the European painting tradition which went through Renaissance and Enlightenment, within the ideology of “reality”, the idea of reflectability of the object in the work of art and the products created with this understanding constituted a turning point and “realism” has evolved from reflecting the object into “reflecting” the “substance” or a specific design in time.
When the trust was placed on the ability of a work of art to “represent” and to reflect the object, the disengagement process that we call as “Modern Art” started. This process is the discussion over and violation of all rules and assumptions of the tradition. Rules and assumptions were overthrown but still, the fundamental building units gave birth to “painting”. Even in abstract painting, there are not “things represented”; there are colours, there are lines.
I am not going into details; as of the end of the 19th century, various art trends have followed one another and tradition has dissolved step by step. What attracts my attention here is what European painting tradition has received from foreign, non-European civilisations and untraditional aspects of its own folklore in this process of confrontation with itself. In other words, “dissolving” elements are the elements of a view “from the outside”. The intersection belongs to Europe but traffic lights are foreign. Japan estamp, African masks/sculptures, works of art of the peoples of Oceania and South America and German, Russian and Arabian folklores are the items of this importation.
This is immediately followed by the exportation spurt of the European modern art. Imperialism constitutes the channels of mutual exchange. In the vernacular of the day, “globalisation” takes place.
This means that there will not be elements not known by everybody on the two dimensions from now on. New alloys to be formed with the existing elements are in question.
Such as that a new paradigm going beyond the existing physics and chemistry can improve new physics and chemistry, a whole break from the known styles of painting is impossible; more precisely, passing beyond the area of painting, the horizon is obvious.
Various practices which are the products that cannot be considered as paintings, does not have such an aim and thus, are beyond “painting” are currently assessed within the scope of art. These “shows” which have varying examples ranging from “Dada” to İstanbul Biennial make me think that: “This range which has nihilism at one end and plain “buffoonery” at the other end needs to be strictly controlled.
If we turn back to painting once again, with a single sentence, “post-modernist” painting is a board to which mosaics taken away from the painting history are attached arbitrarily, are stars taken away from old moons.
I had told that modernist or post-modernist abstract art provokes various interpretations as an understanding where the object is completely expelled from the work of art, that is, the problem of representation is rejected. The superficial “formalism” accusation is not sufficient for the blockade. Within the framework I tried to create from the onset, it has now become a part of the tradition either by reviving under similar conditions with the birth conditions at the start of the 20th century or independently from this.
My question will be as such: If art is not a “holy ‘impartiality’ level” within life and a simple painting-related “experiment”, what is it/what will it be?
I am asking because: when humanbeings turn into a gas cloud in atmosphere within capitalism, abstract art will be incorporated into tradition from the point it has rejected and it will start “representing”, although reluctantly!..
[1] Günümüzde “Kültür”ün Anlamı/The Meaning of “Culture” in Our Day, İktidar (Periodical), Issue: 1, p. 14
[2] Sosyalizm Bazen Bir Yalnızlık Biçimidir/ Socialism is sometimes a form of loneliness, Adalet Çutsay, Edebiyat Dostları (Periodical), Issue: 33, p.2
[3] İktidar (Periodical), p.14
[4] Tarihten Güncelliğe/ From History to Actuality, Murat Belge, Published by Alan Yayıncılık, March 1983, p.164
[5] Marksist Estetik/ Maxist Aesthetics, Murat Belge, Published by BFS Yayınları 33, March 1989, p.255
[6] Marksist Estetik, p.216
[7]Marksist Estetik, p.298
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