Δ Sultan´s Nose – Caricatures from Turkey

On August 8, preparing for the Book Fair, the Museum of World Cultures will open the exhibition Sultan´s Nose – Caricatures from Turkey. This exhibition has been initiated and organized by the Turkish Cultural Initiative Diyalog in cooperation with the Museum of World Cultures, the Turkish branch of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and with a support of the Organizing Committee Frankfurt Book Fair 2008 Guest of Honour. It is part of the official programme entitled Turkey – In All Its Colours enabling Turkey to present itself in all its cultural variety as the guest of honour at the Book Fair in 2008.

Do Muslim people have a sense of humour? Since the debate on the Mohammad caricatures that have been published in Denmark Europeans are engaged with this issue. Taking a selection of old and new examples of Turkish caricatures the exhibition Sultan´s Nose – Caricatures from Turkey shows how central a role satire has played as a form of socio-political argument since the time of the Sultans in Turkey.

Within the exhibition caricaturists will be presented who are regarded as classics in Turkey: since the 1950s graphic artists like Turhan Selçuk and Tan Oral captivate with intellectually and artistically ambitious representations and manifestations of the changes in metropolises like Istanbul. 

Simultaneously, the exhibition shows for the first time in Germany, a representative selection of the younger generation of Turkish caricaturists. Saucy political drawings from the daily newspapers, powerful women, and the artists of the satire magazines “LeMan”, “Penguen” and “Uykusuz” are the main actors of the contemporary Turkish caricature.

Next to the works of male and female caricaturists the documentary wing of the exhibition offers a broad and grounded view of the history and significance of the Turkish caricature since the end of the 19th century.

Once it had been just a nose. Sultan Abdülhamit II (1842-1918) hated intimations regarding his formidable smelling organ so much that he himself had ordered the censorship to prohibit even the use of the word nose. This was stylishly laid on the masters’ pointed pen. No other nose has ever been such a popular subject of mockery.

In Turkey as well as in Europe, the artistic medium of caricature came into being in the course of long time overdue political reforms during the last century of the Ottoman Empire. Just as the recent argument about the Mohammad caricatures reflects international tensions in the global arena, so the critical caricatures from Turkey are a mirror image of the political and social conflicts inherent in the country. A core subject is also the sustained debate with Europe which lasts since more than a century.

Things that are hit out at are nearly all those rarely found in the daily press: migration to the cities, all-powerful military, gender roles, family structures, bashing policemen, mafioso politicians, violence against women, children and minorities, changing moral ideas, cybermania, the orientalisms of the West and the stereotypes about the West.

Accompanying the exhibition a publication is brought out by Istanbul University Press and the Berlin Publisher Dagyeli in a bilingual German-Turkish edition containing a selection of Turkish caricatures. This book will be available at a price of € 28.

schließen

Δ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the art of Cameroon

In June 1905 the artists’ association “Die Brücke” was founded in Dresden by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. These four academy friends were determined to find “immediate and unadulterated” new ways of artistic expression and to leave the path of academic rules and traditions. The “Brücke” sets the beginning of modern art in Germany, their representatives being curious men who wished to go beyond national and cultural borders. During their visits of the collections of the Ethnological Museums in Dresden and Berlin – then felt as “exotic” – the members of the group received powerful incentives from the material culture of extra-European societies, especially in the years between 1907 and 1910.

The exhibition “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the art of Cameroon” is meant as a study about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) and his relationship to the art of Cameroon. It presents 15 exhibits of African art jointly with 16 of Kirchner’s works. Its aim is to document how African sculpture in general and that of Cameroon in particular affected the painting and plastic art of the Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It was suggested by the discovery that Kirchner possessed a genuine work of Cameroonian wood carving. It is a leopard stool made in the 19th century, the art work of a Babanki master carver from the Tungo Area. This stool accompanied Kirchner over nearly thirty years of his life, and it claims centre stage in the exhibition.

schließen

Δ Travelling and Discovering.

The exhibition Travelling and discovering: from the Sepik to the Main puts 124 objects taken from the internationally renowned Oceania Collection of the Museum of World Cultures on show. At the beginning of the 1960s these had been acquired in Papua New Guinea by scientists of the Frobenius Institute for the Frankfort Ethnological Museum. During two research expeditions heading for the Sepik River area in the north eastern part of the island they collected carved ancestor figures, debating stools, paintings on palm leaf sheaths and “sacred flutes” – counted today among the highlights of the museum. In Frankfort these have been exhibited only twice in the past: in 1964 in the Städel’sches Kunstinstitut and in 1987 in the Kunsthalle Schirn.

Visitors are invited to enter the flow of time and undertake a journey in the company of the exhibits. We’ll start on the Sepik River at the beginning of the 1960s to gain a view into male and female spheres of life and an understanding of the institution of the men’s house. Continuing our way we will gain impressions of the collecting activities of the researchers in the field. A series of photos will introduce us to the transport of the collection from the Sepik River to the Main.

As an exemplary mode of the presentation of ethnographic objects in a museum the style of the 1960s is reconstructed: considered as scientific evidence objects are staged in the form of dioramas with photos and text panels. At the end of the journey all objects have become ‘pure’ works of art and have arrived in the gallery of the present.

In a replicated museum’s storeroom visitors will have the opportunity to get more information on the exhibits. An explorer’s handbook will help children to find the way to their own research station where they can touch things themselves.

schließen