D O C U M E N T - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

DOCUMENTO

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ARTISTIC AWAKENING
IN ANKARA (1953)1

BÜLent ecevit

Until very recently, we Ankara residents were as jealous of Istanbul’s
artistic awareness as we were of its sea and its trees.

Our trees have yet to reach maturity, and we are as distant from

the sea as ever, but an artistic awakening has now begun in Ankara as
Bueno.

Concert tickets have begun to sell out in the blink of an eye, como
soon as they are available. Curiously enough, tickets to the opening
night of the opera reportedly sometimes sell out even before they are
released.2 I say “reportedly” because this is a story I heard from one
of the people interested in opening nights at the opera. Our opera no
longer admits people to the concert hall who are ungroomed or who
lack a formal dinner jacket. There are frequent balls at the opera. You’d
think you’re in 18th-century Vienna. Porque, as far as we know, este
kind of dandyism no longer exists in any 20th-century city. Even in the
most traditional of cities, like London, people in dinner jackets sit side-
by-side with those in sports coats.

1
2

First published in Turkish as “Ankara’da sanat uyanıs¸ı,” Dünya, Abril 2, 1953, notario público.
The Ankara Opera, designed in 1933 by Turkish architect S¸evki Balmumcu as a space for
large-scale exhibitions, was converted for use as the Ankara State Opera by German archi-
tect Paul Bonatz in 1948. It was a widely recognized symbol of Turkey’s—and especially
Ankara’s—cultural sophistication. The Ankara Opera was also a major social hub for the
city’s art and literary crowds during the 1950s, a time when Ankara rivaled Istanbul for
the status of the country’s top cultural center.

doi:10.1162/arTm_a_00135

121
121

Anyhow, this is not the topic at hand!
In the wake of music and theater, people have recently begun to
show significant interest in painting. There are at least three or four
exhibitions open at any given time. Between the two galleries at Ankara
University’s Department of Language, Historia, and Geography, y el
newly founded Helikon Art Association located on Mithat Pas¸a (para-
merly I˙smet Pas¸a) Calle, there are no gaps.3 Additionally, exhibitions
are held in different school associations’ gathering-places.

It used to be that the state was the most reliable patron of art exhi-
bitions.4 Now, individuals’ gradually increasing interest fills in the void
left by state support.

What is more, an intellectual youth are chief among those who are

purchasing paintings. These young people, who invest the money for
which they have fought tooth and nail in painting, have increased in
number to a tangible degree. In this way, paintings aligned with con-
temporary art [çag˘das¸ sanat anlayıss¸ı] receive more attention than ever
antes.

Officialdom [resmî]5—whether half-official committees, or rich
people who only appreciate painting to the extent that it resembles
something else—requires that purchased paintings be “klasik.”6 This is
the situation in many countries. Ahora, with the emergence of buyers
from amongst young intellectual circles, painting has attained the
patron it craves the most in all countries. In this way, modern art
receives support in the most salubrious way.

The fact that the Helikon Association, which receives no aid, era
founded and is able to maintain its hold reveals that an intellectual com-

Ecevit himself was one of the cofounders of Helikon, which was active in Ankara
entre 1952 y 1956. He frequently used his art columns as a platform to publish pho-
tographs of Helikon’s exhibitions and promote the gallery’s activities.

4 Müs¸teri, which I have translated as “patron,” also means “customer” or “buyer.” Ecevit
used the English word “patron” elsewhere: por ejemplo, when he was quoted in an
American newspaper, stating, “no longer could the government continue as a generous
patron of arts” in a talk he gave to a local audience about the Turkish art world. Marjorie
Cazador, “Ottoman Empire’s End Freed Turkish Artists,” Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel,
Noviembre 1, 1954, notario público.
Resmî can translate as a range of things, but it indicates belonging or affiliation with the
estado, in contrast to something that is by nature private (özel) or personal in nature.
I am leaving klasik as such because this calque carries very specific meaning in the mid-
century Turkish context: específicamente, as Ecevit’s statement reflects, klasik was used to
refer to a mimetic painting tradition, primarily landscapes and still lifes, which was pro-
moted by the Turkish state in the context of the yearly State Painting and Sculpture
Exhibitions, and which stood in opposition to newly emerging modes of abstract
art-making.

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122

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munity has emerged in Ankara. In other Western countries, this type of
association is what enables advanced (avant-garde) [o¨ncu¨ (avant-garde)]
art movements to survive. Helikon is, I believe, the first of this type of
association in Ankara, and if it is not, it is the most broadly engaged.
At the beginning, the name was thought to be a bit strange. Pero
the fact that it seemed strange was also good, because once heard it is
not forgotten.

Helikon was the name of a mountain in Greek mythology. En
ancient times, some of the Muses would gather at the mountain of
Helikon, some at Parnassus.

The association will primarily take up today’s advanced art move-

mentos. While its gallery on Mithat Pas¸a Street is not large, es
Ankara’s most central and enlightened gallery. Since mid-October,
exhibitions have opened of Hasan Kaptan, the Group of Ten, and an
exhibition of some seventy reproductions of modern French paintings
with explanatory captions. Arif Kaptan and I˙hsan C. Karaburçak have
each given talks on the topic of modern painting. Además, hay
film screenings about well-known painters and sculptors and related
talks. The gallery currently has an exhibition of Hakkı I˙zet’s ceramics,
which will be followed by an exhibition by the Eyübog˘lus.7

The association’s musical branch endeavors to introduce contem-
porary musical movements that are not very well-known in our coun-
intentar, including twelve-tone music. Para esto, Helikon organizes
gatherings with musical records and explanatory texts, and vocal and
chamber music recitals. Recientemente, one of the young generation’s impor-
tant composers, I˙lhan Usmanbas¸, organized a two-night program with
explanatory texts on Wozzeck.

On the evening of March 30, another concert program held in the

foyer of the Great Theater, and featuring Leyla Gençer, Mithat Fenmen,
Fethi Kopuz, and Enver Kakıcı, will feature songs by another of our
young and important composers, Bülent Arel, which he has composed
using the twelve-tone technique.8

All of the artists cited by Ecevit here were involved in various currents that challenged the
conservative klasik paradigm of painting, with an appeal to various abstract modes.
I˙lhan Usmanbas¸ (b. 1921) would go on to have a long, distinguished career as a composer
of experimental music. In the case of Bülent Arel (1919–1990), a 1957 piece composed for
a group of Helikon musicians—in which Arel manipulated an electronic circuit from the
audience, emitting sounds from a hidden speaker while a classical quartet played at the
front of the room—ultimately led the composer to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic
Music Studio, where he contributed to the invention of electronic music in the early 1960s.

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123

The association’s cinema branch will endeavor to support films
that our filmmakers, doubtless because they look down upon the level
of culture even of our major cities, have neglected to import. Por supuesto,
to do this properly requires money, which is connected to time and
luck. For that reason, for the moment we are making do with the films
that the Embassies Association can get hold of.

The Ankara Law Employees Thought Club (Ankara Hukuk
Mensupları Fikir Kulübü) has also contributed significantly to the cul-
tural life of our city. On the occasion of each new play’s staging in
Ankara, the Club meets and has discussions with the writer, director,
y actores; it also organizes poetry nights, art talks, architectural visits,
and group trips to art exhibitions.

According to what we hear, this Club—some of whose activities
everyone can benefit from—will soon widen its reach and also admit
members who are not from the Law and Political Science Departments.
Perhaps the best aspect of the new artistic awakening in Ankara is

that it is an awakening unconnected to state support. No longer over-
shadowed, the intellectual community in Ankara has blossomed to the
extent that it no longer needs other sources of benefaction.

Tr anslaTed by sar ah-neel smiTh

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