Bohemian Paris is still alive and well in a little café on th i Left Bank

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BY AMELIA
FRENCH
¡BA ÖĞRETMEN/
SIPA PRESS
5V t
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.
Fikret M ualla
Bohemian Paris is still alive and well in a little café on th i Left Bank
(left) adopted La
Palette and was
the first Turkish
artist to move to
Paris permanently
in 1940; Komet
(right) arrived in
1972
62
63
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 BeauxArts, 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 Anlı (top
right) and 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 of the art
world and 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 BeauxArts. 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 1970.1would 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 for her
large round ceramic
bowls in ancient
Anatolian
civilisations. Yuksel
Arslan (right) says he
came to Paris because
he was looking for
adventure
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 BeauxArts 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. Ce66 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
Soyak
Kuyulubostan Sokak 44/2
Nişantaşı, Istanbul
Büyükdere Caddesi 38
Mecidiyeköy, İstanbul
(Tel: 1470899/1479756)
(Tel: 1750910)
Galeri Nev
Artlsan
Maçka Caddesi 33/B
Vapur İskelesi 3
Maçka, İstanbul
Ortaköy, İstanbul
(Tel: 1316763)
(Tel: 1595156)
Kişisel Arşivlerde İstanbul Belleği
Taha Toros Arşivi