Fikret M ualla (left) adopted La Palette and was the first Turkish artist to move to Paris permanently in 1940; Komet (right) arrived in 1972
Bohemian Paris is still alive and well in a little café on th i Left Bank
BY AMELIA FRENCH
¡BA ÖĞRETMEN/ SIPA PRESS
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nee an area where destitute artists eked out their centimes over long cups of coffee in pavement cafés, the Rue de Seine is a slightly seamy street in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank which has become one of the most chic places in Paris. But some things have not changed — half-way down the street, La Palette is still attracting a slightly Bohemian clientele, which includes Turkish artists.
Every Saturday, in this busy little café, a somewhat raucous group of Turks gather to enjoy a demi of beer, accompanied by a pungent Gauloise cigarette. At one table sits painter Abidin Dino, an aristocratic-looking man in his late-70s, with his wife, talking to another painter Utku Varlik, ceramicist Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye and other Turkish artists and intellectuals.
At the bar is Yiiksel Arslan, drinking Kristal, which he says is made somewhere in central France and tastes much more like Turkey’s raki than the other,sweeter French aniseed drinks.
The tradition of Turkish artists in Paris goes back a long way, as does their connec tion with La Palette, the one café in the area which has kept its old appearance, says Arslan. It still has several second-rate paintings on the wall, along with the inevita ble artists’ palettes, a bad-tempered waiter and a pleasantly run-down atmosphere.
La Palette was adopted by Fikret Mualla (1904-66), the first Turkish artist to move to Paris permanently in 1940. Many others before had spent two or three years there. Even in Ottoman times, painters, mainly with a military training, were sent to the French capital to study.
Mualla had little in common with his military forebears. Mad, unruly, and fasci nated by the Bohemian image of life in Paris, he drank excessively and was fre quently hurled out of cafés for not being able to pay his bills.
He did a little painting at Montmartre — scenes of Paris life full of lively colours and strong, heavy figures, sometimes faintly reminiscent of Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso. But it was not easy. There were simply too many artists, many of them mediocre, so he started to paint around the Rue de Seine, near the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, selling his work on the street or in little galleries nearby.
Mualla started to frequent La Palette in 1951 and continued a life of excess until his lifestyle caught up with him and he moved to the south of France where he died under the care of a French woman known only as Madame Anglés.
“This was his area,” says Abidin Dino, who followed Mualla to Paris, along with others such as Hakki Anil, Selim Turan and Avni Arbaç. Several of these had belonged to what was called the D-Group, formed in the 1930s by Dino and other artists to encourage Turkish art to take on Western trends, such as cubism and expressionism.
Today there are about 40 Turkish art ists based in Paris. So why did they leave Turkey? Dino, aged 76, is the grand old man of Turkish artists in Paris. He says he came because he already had links with Paris, having lived there for five years as a boy. He returned in 1938 for several years before settling there for good in 1953. He remem bers St Germain in the 1950s, when it was much livelier and frequented by Picasso and numerous other artists. Dino was awarded the Lauréat of Arts and Letters last June.
Anh, aged 83, received a scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1947 and moved there permanently in 1954. His early works are strongly reminiscent of Cézanne, then Picasso, before he established his own style of heavy, dark figures. Anh enjoyed consid erable success in the 1960s, exhibiting widely throughout Europe.
Arbaç received a scholarship from the French government in 1945, but insists he would have gone anyway, drawn by the
Hakkı A nlı (top right) an d Abidin Dino (right) belonged to the D-Group, founded in the 1930s by Dino and other artists to encourage Turkish a rt to take on Western trends. Selçuk Dentirel (far
right) one of the younger set, still believes that Paris is the centre o f the art world an d Utku Varlık (bottom left), who left Istanbul in 1970, says he often feels he was bom in Paris
wealth of museums. “Paris was much more attractive as a place to people of our voca tion. It wasn’t easy to be an artist in those days in Istanbul,” he recalls. He exhibited this year at Tem art gallery in Istanbul.
There was considerable coming and going in the late 1930s and 1940s between Istanbul and Paris. Bedri Rahmi Eyiiboglu, perhaps Turkey’s most famous 20th-century artist, spent some time there before return ing to Istanbul to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts.
Several of Eyiiboglu’s students subse quently received scholarships from the Turkish government to the Ecole des Beaux- Arts. Omer Kale? studied under him before leaving for Paris in 1965, as did Komet, who arrived in 1972. The spate of artists in cluded Utku Varhk and Erdal Alantar, al though the latter studied in Florence before leaving for Paris in 1959, on a whim, with his wife.
“In those days, life happened in Paris,” says Alantar, who had to struggle at the start, working in factories to make a living. He is much in demand now, teaching in Paris and exhibiting around Europe and fre quently in Turkey. His next exhibition will be at Istanbul’s Soyak gallery in September.
Varlık remembers his student days in Istanbul in the 1960s affectionately, al though he was more than ready to leave when he did. “At the time, there were black clouds looming,” Varlık recalls, sitting in his attic studio on a swelteringly hot Paris afternoon. In Turkey, there was a wave of student unrest which was to lead to a mili tary intervention in 1973.
“Our education was substantially influ enced by foreign culture. Turkey has always been strongly influenced by other countries, especially Western culture, and our genera tion believed everything of value was for eign. It was only later we saw some value in Turkish culture. I left and closed the door behind me in 1970.1 would have left even if I hadn't got my scholarship because I wanted a change. On top of that there were only three galleries in Istanbul at the time. In Turkey, a painter had to be a teacher or do another job to make a living.”
Apart from government scholarships, France was the favoured destination, be cause of French culture. “We loved its cin ema, art and life. At the time, France was still the artistic centre of the world. Now it has moved to New York, Berlin, even London,” Varlık says.
Dino, in particular, represented an im portant intellectual figure for the younger painters, an image strengthened by his links with numerous French intellectuals and art ists such as Picasso, Jean Cocteau, André Malraux and Jean Prevert.
Varlik says he often feels he was born in Paris. He sees nothing Turkish in his paint ings — carefully composed oils, all of which have a woman moving across them draped in a kind of spider’s web. His transparent effect intensifies the dream quality in paint ings which Varlik says are an exploration into the subconscious. His work sells well both inside and outside Turkey, where he exhibited recently at the Artisan art gallery in Istanbul.
Yiiksel Arslan has invented a word for his work, which is more illustration than painting. He calls them “artures”. His tech nique is to rub soft stones on to a surface of his own creation based on a medieval rec ipe. His work, predominantly series of small figures, is often reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, with his penetration into the human psyche, often in an unhealthy state.
Arslan says he has been strongly influ enced by Nietzsche, the Marquise de Sade and the black humour of the Turkish shadow
puppet, Karagöz. His work is often inten sely disturbing, sometimes humorous, and the colours are strong and natural.
He was initially invited to Paris by André Breton in 1959, who had heard his name through an American poet and art critic, Edouard Roditi, to participate in an exhibition on the theme of erotism in sur realism. Unable to get a passport, he had to wait until 1961 before his eventual depar ture. “Anyway,” he says, “I knew already that I wasn’t a surrealist.”
Like many of the others, Arslan mar ried a French woman, but has never both ered to take up dual nationality. He returns to Turkey rarely, professing a dislike for travel, although he does exhibit at the Tern gallery in Istanbul.
Arslan says he was simply looking for adventure and that it was more chance than anything else which kept him in Paris. He now lives in a small flat in the charmingly
provincial quarter around the Rue
Mouffetard, near the old Sorbonne, sur rounded by his “artures” and numerous old tools, skulls, boxes of insects and bits and pieces picked up at markets.
He rarely goes out, apart from his weekly stroll to inspect the bouqinistes, the
second-hand booksellers along the Seine, followed by a visit to La Palette, where he refuses to sit down, because “I spend 14 hours a day sitting at my desk and reading or drawing”, chatting to different people and teasing the waiters.
Caricaturist-cum -illustrator Selçuk Demirel, one of the younger set, arrived in the late 1970s. He has been very successful, drawing for Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomati que and numerous magazines and books. His work has featured twice recently on the cover of Le Nouvel Observateur, the current affairs magazine.
Demirel’s work is greatly varied, often involving people facing some kind of di lemma. He works without stopping, dream ing up what he calls his formulae on the Métro, in cafés and in restaurants. He plays with objects to make a sometimes political but more often universal comment.
“Contrary to what people believed, I didn’t come here for political reasons. Al though things were difficult in Turkey, and I had been part of a group of quite aggressive cartoonists or caricaturists, I decided to pack my bags and come here just to live and work.” France is for him the pays de la caricature and he admired the long-standing 65
Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye (left) considers herself a European but finds inspiration fo r her large round ceramic bowls in ancient Anatolian
civilisations. Yuksel A rslan (right) says he came to Paris because he was looking for adventure
66
tradition of drawing, going back to the 17th and 18th centuries. He also believes that Paris is still the centre of the art world.
Many of these Paris artists say they found it hard to get started and although Demirel got going fairly quickly, he says he had major financial difficulties at first. “But I never did any other kind of work to make ends meet, like some of the others,” he says. He registered at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts to get the necessary carte de sejour to stay, but never completed his studies there.
Demirel says he keeps in touch with Turkey and is keenly aware of what people at home think of him and the others who have left. However long they have been living abroad and whatever their feelings about Turkey, all Turkish artists living in Paris exhibit regularly in Turkey. And often their paintings fetch higher prices than those of their colleagues in Turkey.
“There is a certain snobbery in Istanbul about buying from artists who live abroad, particularly among the nouveau riche, says Demirel, who has recently exhibited at Nev Gallery in Istanbul.
There is general agreement that the Istanbul art market is coming to life. Ce- ramicist Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye was over
come by the interest in a recent exhibition she gave in Istanbul. “People are suddenly interested in buying art, and with my pieces it wasn’t just wealthy people. There were also people who bought and paid in instal ments. I was very touched by that because my prices are high. I sold everything.”
Siesbye settled in Paris only this year, but has been a frequent visitor since 1980. In her new workshop there she makes large round bowls inspired by ancient Anatolian civilisations. She works in stoneware, a reason in itself why she is unable to work in her native country, because “I simply can’t get those materials in Turkey”.
She studied ceramics in Istanbul before leaving for Denmark, where she learnt how to work with stoneware. She then worked in the Danish Royal Porcelain factories and after 26 years there, she decided it was time for a change and came to Paris. “After such a long time, it’s important for any artist to have a change and new challenges. I spoke the language and had many friends here and it’s still a very central city.
“New York is perhaps more exciting, but I had no intention of going to live there. It’s very difficult to make it in New York. And we’re Latin in a way. We are very Francophile in Turkey. It was always natural for Turks to come to Paris. It’s still the centre of European art and we’re Euro peans,” she says.
One of Siesbye’s pieces, a lapis lazuli bowl, will be auctioned in Sotheby’s in London, on October 26, at a sale of impres sionist paintings and contemporary ceramic pieces.
Omer Uluq, who has been based in Paris since 1984, agrees. “I came to Paris looking for calm, because New York is too hard and becoming very big business and superficial. It’s impossible for an artist to concentrate there.”
He also says that London is not an easy place for foreign artists to get started as the galleries are more closed to outsiders, ex cept for those from the United States. Uluq is unwilling to establish himself anywhere. He has a studio in Berlin as well and spends about three months in Istanbul every year.
First and foremost, he says he is an Istanbul artist, with close links to Byzan tine and Ottoman art. His paintings consist of vibrant brushstrokes some would link with the dancing shapes in Ottoman cal ligraphy. He left Turkey in the 1960s and has lived in the United States and Africa be cause he felt restricted in Turkey, mainly by the lack of “internationalism”.
“It’s very important to take risks in art,” he says. “Turkish artists are very timid. It was the lack of enthusiasm for art that pushed us out of the country, but it is growing now. Compared to other countries, however, it is still very small.” □
Amelia French is a freelance w riter living in Istanbul.
Further information:
Tem Sanat Galerisi
Kuyulubostan Sokak 44/2 Nişantaşı, Istanbul (Tel: 1470899/1479756) Galeri Nev Maçka Caddesi 33/B Maçka, İstanbul (Tel: 1316763) Soyak Büyükdere Caddesi 38 Mecidiyeköy, İstanbul (Tel: 1750910) Artlsan Vapur İskelesi 3 Ortaköy, İstanbul (Tel: 1595156)
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