National Art Education Association

Art Treasures of TurkeyAuthor(s): Burton WassermanSource: Art Education, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 15-19Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190941 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 03:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ART TREASURES OF TURKEY

BURTON WASSERMAN Visit the Art Treasures of Turkey exhibition. A richness of visual experience awaits you. It's altogether different from anything else in the world of art. & Until January 29, the show may be seen in Houston, Texas at The Museum of Fine Arts. Afterward, during 1967, the exhibition will move on to the Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City; the Seattle Art Museum; the de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco; the Milwaukee Art Center; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The show is scheduled for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City during the early part of 1968. The exhibition is being circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service following its initial presentation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. All together some 286 objects-stone, bronze, gold, silver, ivory, porcelain, carpets, silks, armor, and illuminated manuscripts -are on view. Also included are classical statuary, jewel- encrusted belts and daggers, an 8,000 year old mirror, and delicate jewelry worn in Troy 1,000 years before the Trojan War. 6 There are bronze grave offerings dating back to 2,400 B.C., fertility idols from the sixth to the third millennia B.C. and a number of recent discoveries from the Greek and Roman periods of the land known once as Anatolia. The great early moments of Turkish history happened under the Hittites of the second millennium B.C., who also left a deep artistic imprint. Animal-shaped drinking vessels and massive stone sculptures of the gods, some weighing as much as a ton, show the advanced state of art during the time of the Hittites. 4 In the next ten centuries the area was con- quered and reconquered as the Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans enjoyed the land's riches. Each tri- umphant civilization left hidden treasures-among them two bronze statues from the Golden lonian Age which were dis- covered in Turkey's coastal waters just in time to be included in the exhibition. There is also an exceptionally fine life-size marble statue of a young Greek athlete which was recovered

in this generation. Several of the Roman portrait heads in the collection were recent discoveries in archaeological digs at Sardis and Aphrodisias. A bronze portrait of the Emperor Trajan dates from the rich and relatively peaceful period of the second century A.D. when the region was part of the Roman Empire. t When, in the early fourth century, Emperor Constantine established his "second" Rome on the Bosphorus and Constantinople became the eastern center of Christianity, the area's art began to show an increasingly mixed Oriental-Christian influence. An early Byzantine work in the exhibition, a marble portrait of Emperor Arcadius, indicates the growing stylization of forms, while a sixth century silver dish shows two extremes-Hellenistic figures set in a Byzantine two-dimensional field. In the eleventh century, the region was conquered by the Seldjuk Turks who brought their arabesque motifs and calligraphic renderings of verses from the Koran. Rug making, an art in which Turkish craftsmen excelled perhaps above all others, was imported from the East and is represented in the exhibition by rare examples dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 0 Brightly decorated robes of silk, jewel-en- crusted weapons and books, armor and mirrors, and delicate inlaid chests are from the sumptuous world of the Ottoman Turks who ruled from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. Many of these objects are lent by the famed Topkapi Museum, a treasure house of the sultans' splendor. % Per- haps the greatest need of this day and age is for the peoples of the earth to understand each other more thoroughly and more sympathetically. What better way to do this than by traveling the bridges between the continents provided by the arts? Perhaps a good step in the direction of the Orient might well be taken via the Near East. The Art Treasures of Turkey certainly offers such a step-and a most inviting one it is. & Burton Wasserman is a professor of art at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey.

15

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

? S 4 <

Siiiiooo ..

S.... <4<

... <t< fr# 4

744/4i!,•••,, .................. • '4V• &

t. /

................ Q 4 < 4r•••, •, ........ ........ ......... i •

44/ 4444

4<,,,4,

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

FACING PAGE, ABOVE: bronze cauldron on ring stand, Altintepe, eighth century B.C. FACING PAGE, BELOW: painted bowl, Hacilar, Chalcolithic, fifth mil. B.C.; gold medallion, Galatian, circa 278-189 B.C.; basalt high relief, Marash, eighth century B.C.; jade mirror with gold inlay and jewels, Ottoman, sixteenth- seven- teenth century. THIS PAGE: flat-rimmed faience dish, Isnik, Ottoman, late fifteenth century. (Reproduc- tion of high relief courtesy the National Gallery of Art; other works courtesy the Smithsonian Institution.)

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

FACING PAGE, ABOVE: clay goblet, Troy, circa 2300 B.C.; FACING PAGE, BELOW: bronze statue of a Negro boy, Bodrum, late Hellenistic, second to first century B.C.; dagger of rock crystal and gold with jewels, Otto- man, sixteenth century; gold earring, Troy, circa 2300 B.C.; painted crater, Gordion, late eighth century B.C. THIS PAGE: faience mosque lamp, isnik, Ottoman, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. (Reproduction of statue and dagger courtesy the National Gallery; other works courtesy the Smithsonian Institution.)

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

61

LAp

x 1-4

•

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.63 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:45:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions