First Impressions of Istanbul | 2014

Cityscapes of Istanbul, Turkey 

by Joe Pollitt 

İlk izlenimler | ISTANBUL 2014

Ben geldiğimde SOMA olaydan önce bir hafta var.

21. yüzyılın en büyük Madencilik felaket.

Medya ilgisini gizli nerede oluştu dehşet.

İnsanların ölmesi ve hangi onlar öldü yol tutar.

Seçimlerden önce sorunlar susturulması.

Tüm bayraklar yarım maske uçuyordu ve yas başladı.

Hüzün omnipresent. Kabir azabı tarafından etkilenen tüm.

Güneşin ne olursa olsun, üzüntü içinde Turizm Merkezi sahne aldı.

Bu trajedinin ve topluluklar içinde 800 artı madenci öldü

Türkiye'nin batısında etkilendi ve gelecek nesiller için olacak.

Ölümlerin her bir dokundu; Aile, arkadaşlar, komşular ve daha fazlası...

Ve Başkan'ın yardım bölgeye askeri adamları ile geldi,

Bu Soma nezaret ve bu bölge için bakan ama.

Galatasaray forvet sanki çılgınca masum tekme fotoğraflandı.

Bagajda bir protestocu koyarak, iki asker savunma tarafından basılı.

Bir yardım olmadan şefkat, her milletin ruhsuz ve kalpsiz ayakbağı.

Bu vahşeti, mutlak alay hissettim tanık bir vizyon görüntüsünü yapıldı.

elite hangi belli oldu. Kalpleri ve zihinleri nefreti

Bu etkilenen şiddetli idi. Öfke, kelime, daha fazla öfke değildi.

Çıkışları, işe yaramaz ne'erdowells ve kendini maddeleri kullanılmıştır lideriyiz.

Başkan'ın oğlu, haksız kazanç doldurulmuş bavul sürükleyerek bulundu.

Ve rüşvet para ağırlığını taşıyacak tüm ama imkansız.

Ve sonra kesişen mecazi köprü arasında dünyalar bölme.

Istanbul ve onun çoğunluk kuralı liderleri bir dalış tabureye yerleştirilen

çocukları olarak İlköğretim Okulu dışarı gel ve kendilerini daldırma

Yüzme havuzunda. Istanbul'da aptal kim?

Dünya karışık din barındırıyor. Camiler, trans, tekne ve vizyon.

Bu antik şehir İstanbul; Genel, gerçekçi ve olumlu vokal.

Kültürler çarpışır, Doğu tarafında ve geçmiş nerede tamamen iyi niyetli.

Ve Müttefik savaş gelinler haklı, istismar ve Kaptan'ın masaya eğlendirdi.

Nerede insanlar fakir ama sık sık oynak. Mükemmel asi için bir üreme alanı.

İğrenç arabaları ve kaçaklar. Şapkalar, palto ve throwaways; Istanbul şehri burası.

Müzik geceleri barlarda duydum. Görüntüleri ve ses sokaklarda gördüğümüz; arabalar flash ve

Modern Sinema, Şişman kediler ve çocuklar, yüksek sesle kendi ucuz gitar tıngırdatma iken Küba purosu.

Erkekler puffin nargile ile yüz yaralar, wannbe Asla Superstars bu sevinçlerini Türk barlar vardır.

Ezan ve kamet biz taze bahar sabahları hafif hava karşılaştırmak gibi bizim yüzler yıkama için düşüyor.

Cesur iletiler, yasadışı içecekler; bizim yabancı İncil tarama gibi keskin kenarları ile kitap okudum.

Biz dört kabile olarak görülen ya o ya da sadece kemik idolü. Muhteşem şehir Istanbul gitme zamanı

Reddeder ve yazarlar, kaybedenler ve dışlanmış, şairler ve dansçılar, tüm Konstantinopolis'te bekliyoruz.

Güvercin kanadı ve boğaz dalgalar - bilge adam kravat takan kara gözlü veda.

Kalıntılar içinde yatan bir üzüntü. Beni hiçbir şey düşünmek ve beni asla unutma.

 

English Version

First Impressions | ISTANBUL 2014

One week before the SOMA incident, is when I arrived.

The greatest mining disaster of the 21^st Century.

Hidden from Media attention where the horrors that occurred.

The amount of people killed and the way in which they died.

Just before the elections the troubles were silenced.

All the flags were flying at half mask and the mourning started.

The sadness was omnipresent. All were affected by the torment.

Regardless of the sun, sadness took centre stage over Tourism. 

800 plus miners died in this tragedy and all the communities within

Western Turkey were affected and will be for generations to come. 

The deaths touched every one; family, friends, neighbours and more...

And when the President’s aid came to the region with his military men,

overseeing those in Soma and caring for those in the region but he was

photographed wildly kicking the innocent as if he were a Galatasaray striker.

Putting the boot in to a protester, held down by two military men in defence.

An Aid without compassion, a soulless and heartless nuisance to any nation.

This was an image of brutality, a vision witnessed of utter derision felt from

the elite which, became so obvious. The hatred in the hearts and minds

of those affected were raging. Anger was not the word, more fury.

The Leaders are sell-outs, useless ne’erdowells and self preservers.

The President’s son was found dragging stuffed suitcases of ill-gotten gains.

 And the weight of the bribery money was all but impossible to carry.

And then the crossing of the metaphorical bridge between dividing worlds.

Istanbul and its majority rule, leaders placed on a ducking stool

as the kids come out of elementary school and dip themselves

in the swimming pool. Who are the fools in Istanbul?

Harbouring worlds of mixed religion. Mosques, trans, boats and vision.

This ancient city of Constantinople; Global, truthful and positively vocal.

Where cultures collide, down the east side and history is utterly bona fide.

And allied war brides are justified, abused and amused on the Captian’s table. 

Where people are poor but often playful. A breeding ground for the perfect rebel.

Filthy carts and stowaways. Hats, coats and throwaways; this is the City of Istanbul.

Music by night is heard in the bars. Sights and sound on the streets we see; flash cars and

Modern Cinemas, fat cats and Cuban cigars whilst kids strum loudly on their cheap guitars.

Men puffin shisha with facial scars, wannbe-never Superstars those are the joys of Turkish bars.

Rising to the call for prayer, washing our faces as we compare the lighter air on fresh Spring mornings.

Bold messages, illegal beverages; books read with hard edges as we scan through our foreign Bible.

All around we’re seen as Tribal either that or just bone idol. Time to leave the glorious City of Istanbul

Rejects and writers, losers and outcasts, poets and dancers, all are welcome in Constantinople.

Pigeon wings and Bosporus waves - goodbye to the wise guy with the black-eye wearing a necktie.

The sadness that lies inside remains. Think nothing of me and remember me never.

THE MAGNIFICENT CITY OF ISTANBUL

Istanbul II, 2014

Istanbul III, 2014

 

Istanbul IV, 2014

Istanbul V, 2014

Istanbul VI, 2014

Istanbul VII, 2014

Interesting Article about Tribal Art by Julian Sancton

Source: DEPARTURES
 

September 19, 2013

How to Buy African Art

By Julian Sancton 
 

Sep-2013

 

There has never been a better time to buy antique tribal masks and sculptures from Africa—just don't expect to find them there.

First, let’s agree on what to call it, because it’s a matter of some debate. For a long time, the preferred label was primitive art, which reeked of ethnocentrism. Since then, other catchalls have been proposed, each problematic in its own way: Negro art, village art, tribal art... People in the business today tend to call it simply “African art,” but of course that’s not right, either. For one thing, they’re referring to works created in the precolonial and colonial periods, which exclude contemporary African art. For another, the ceremonial masks and statues in question were never meant as art in the Western sense. And then there’s this: Most of it is not actually in Africa. Not anymore.

You can blame Picasso. Africa’s statuary began migrating to Europe in the 19th century with returning missionaries and colonists, as souvenirs and curiosities. But it wasn’t until Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and their contemporaries started incorporating the spectacularly new forms of African sculpture into their own works (picture Les Demoiselles d’Avignon alongside a Fang mask from Cameroon) that the art world started paying attention. Artifacts suddenly became artworks, and collectors and museums couldn’t get enough of them.

“The majority of what Europeans like as classical, authentic African art has now been sold and has circulated within Europe or the States for 120 years,” says Bernard de Grunne, who was a director of African art at Sotheby’s in the 1980s and ‘90s and now runs a gallery in Brussels, one of the epicenters of the African antiques market, alongside Paris and New York. “As far as classical African art, I think there’s very little left in Africa.”

Meanwhile, sales of African art continue to break records at auction, lifted by the rising tide of the art market as a whole. “I sold only two pieces in my five years at Sotheby’s above a million dollars,” says de Grunne. “Today a million dollars happens at [almost] every auction. Sometimes two or three million.” Chump change next to your average Picasso, but for Heinrich Schweizer, the head of African and Oceanic art at Sotheby’s New York, the comparatively small size of the market makes for a rare opportunity. “Collectors are aware that this is a market where you can still get works of world importance for relatively little money,” he says. “For $10 million, you can probably buy the equivalent of the Mona Lisa.”

The closest Sotheby’s has come to that benchmark was a superb caryatid stool from the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Luba people that sold in Paris three years ago for $7.1 million. The African Mona Lisa, whatever it turns out to be, will be anointed by Western experts, according to Western tastes, independent of its original ritual function. “Whether it comes from Mali or Cameroon, it’s not really relevant,” says de Grunne. “It just has to be great art.” However you define that.

As the business of African art became increasingly a rich white man’s game, the cultures that created the works gradually disappeared or transformed. Carvers in the postcolonial era found it more profitable to copy older works to sell to foreigners, or simply switch to making salad spoons. Up until the late ’80s, says Carlo Bella, the Italian-born director of Manhattan’s Pace Primitive gallery, it was still possible to find authentic pieces in Africa. But little by little, the continent has been emptied of its antiques. “What you find in Africa is for tourists,” says Bella. “It’s wishful thinking. Souvenirs and fakes.”

None of the African art dealers I spoke with travel to Africa for business. Bella would sooner turn to eBay to find masterpieces—and has. Africa’s problem, he says, is the lack of infrastructure and trustworthy provenance, and it’s not unique to the continent. “Think of buying antiquities from Greece. You go to Greece? You go to Italy? Not really, but you go to Sotheby’s here.”

That’s not to say there aren’t treasures to be found in Africa, so long as you can accept the risk. In Arusha, Tanzania, I saw exquisite Benin bronzes, Songye masks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ife heads from Nigeria among dozens of other works in the Cultural Heritage Centre, a rust-colored building modeled after New York’s Guggenheim. For every piece on the gallery floor, there were a hundred more in a dusty storeroom that reminded me of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. To believe the center’s director, it’s the largest collection of ethnographic art in Africa.

“A lot of people categorize all African art as replicas, because there are so many,” says Saifuddin Khanbhai, the self-proclaimed Ali Baba of this particular cave, who built the cultural complex off profits from the tanzanite jewelry he sells next door. (He’s quick to boast that he has done work for Bill Clinton, the queen of Norway and—bizarrely—Wade Boggs.) “Some of the stuff is replicas,” he acknowledges. The trouble is identifying the fakes, since forgeries can be so masterful. “For us to get in touch with Christie’s is impossible, because I can only believe what the agents tell me,” he says, referring to the network of dealers, often Senegalese, who have given him the pieces on consignment.

If this is a tourist trap, then it is an unusually ambitious one. In a city where the only bookstore seems to consist of unalphabetized piles of Mary Higgins Clark paperbacks and secondhand textbooks, the Cultural Heritage Centre is a quixotic undertaking. It seemed less important for Khanbhai that the sculptures be real, though some almost certainly are, than that they be seen. He laments that interest in traditional art among Africans has waned to the point that few carvers even bother making proper replicas anymore. “I want to raise awareness all over Africa,” he says. “If locals understood that their heritage has a value, it would go a long way.”