In this recent piece from his Lost Painting Series, following 1881 (2010) and 1923 (2010), the photorealist painter Taner Ceylan engages with the questions of history and Orientalism by creating yet another visual allegory. The mischievous gaze of the smoking Ottoman boy in 1881 and the homoerotic farewell scene in 1923 are followed this time by an ingenious montage of Pascal Sébah's photograph from the 1880s and Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World, 1866). In this intricately crafted oil painting, Ceylan juxtaposes different yet related histories of artistic style and connoisseurship to trigger a rethinking of Orientalism, femininity, the veil and the gaze. Recovering and drawing together forgotten legacies and silenced voices in a brilliantly imagined new setting, Ceylan invites the viewer to look behind the veil of Orientalism and the politics of representation. Rather than offering a corrective, the artist amalgamates irony, playfulness and realism to recast Orientalism as heterogeneous and susceptible to negotiation, contestation and even subversion

CAKIRLAR, C

DELICE, S

English

UCL Discovery

Contemporary Art / TurkishLondon | 7 Apr 2011, 10:30 AM | L11221LOT 14TANER CEYLANB. 19671879 (FROM THE LOST PAINTING SERIES)signedoil on canvas170 by 180cm.; 66 7/8 by 70 7/8 in.Executed in 2011.ESTIMATE   50,000 - 70,000 GBPCATALOGUE NOTEIn this recent piece from his Lost Painting Series, following 1881 (2010) and 1923 (2010), the photorealist painterTaner Ceylan engages with the questions of history and Orientalism by creating yet another visual allegory. Themischievous gaze of the smoking Ottoman boy in 1881 and the homoerotic farewell scene in 1923 are followed thistime by an ingenious montage of Pascal Sébah's photograph from the 1880s and Gustave Courbet's L'Origine dumonde (The Origin of the World, 1866).In this intricately crafted oil painting, Ceylan juxtaposes different yet related histories of artistic style andconnoisseurship to trigger a rethinking of Orientalism, femininity, the veil and the gaze. Recovering and drawingtogether forgotten legacies and silenced voices in a brilliantly imagined new setting, Ceylan invites the viewer tolook behind the veil of Orientalism and the politics of representation. Rather than offering a corrective, the artistamalgamates irony, playfulness and realism to recast Orientalism as heterogeneous and susceptible to negotiation,contestation and even subversion.Standing in front of L'Origine du monde, a now well-renowned oil on canvas painted by the French artist GustaveCourbet in 1866, the veiled lady wearing a transparent white yashmak and a wrapper (ferace) embellished by arather elegant stole is actually reproduced from an albumen photograph, which Ceylan relocates within his ownpainting. The photograph entitled Dame turque voilée (Veiled Turkish Lady) was taken by Pascal Sébah (1823-1886), the nineteenth-century Ottoman pioneer of photography, who photographed models for Osman Hamdi Bey'sambivalently Orientalist paintings, as well as for the photographic album of traditional Ottoman dress entitled theElbise-i Osmaniyye: Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873. Sébah was also well-known for his depictionsof order, prosperity and progress within a framework of Ottoman modernity as a unique, indigenous project.Ceylan's intriguingly novel setting in which the veiled Ottoman lady poses in front of Courbet's blatantly realisticdepiction of female genitalia further unsettles the politics of representation if one remembers the often neglectedfact that it was Khalil Bey (1831-1879), the Egypt-born Ottoman diplomat and art collector, who commissioned fromCourbet L'Origine du monde. The art historian Francis Haskell has shown that Khalil Bey, from the perspective ofhis French contemporaries, was no more than a profligate and frivolous art collector, "a prince from an Orientaltale...who remained Turkish through his lavish generosity and taste for women and gambling, but became Parisianthrough his wit, his elegance, his love of the theatre and the arts..." (Francis Haskell, "A Turk and His Pictures inNineteenth-Century Paris", in: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 5:1, 1982, p. 41) Khalil Bey's collection of more than ahundred paintings included such confrontationally realist works like L'Origine du monde and Les Dormeuses (TheSleepers), as well as a considerable number of works by those French painters (Chassériau, Marilhat, Gérôme,Ingres and Delacroix) who painted 'Oriental' subjects.Revisiting Khalil Bey's complex legacy, Taner Ceylan presents a seemingly stark contrast between the two femaleembodiments on canvas without necessarily reproducing a rigid gendered distinction between the East and theWest. In doing so, he challenges the representational status of the two bodies, as well as of the Orient and theOccident, by invoking the very multiplicity of desire in terms of both artistic gaze and taste in art patronage.The painterly rigour and eroticism in Ceylan's art-practice have hitherto drawn on many contemporary figures ofinspiration not necessarily limited to photorealists and hyperrealists. The baroque art of Caravaggio, the portraitureof Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, and the intermedial artistic practice of David Hockney can easily beaddressed in appreciating the artist's engagement with photographic embodiment. Ceylan treats the medium astableau vivant: he creates a fiction, documents it as an actual photographic image and translates that fictivedocument onto canvas. Compared to his early homoerotic works, however, precision and mimicry in Ceylan'spaintings gain a further dramatic meaning in the present work. Reframing Sébah and Courbet in such a peculiarmise-en-scène, the artist designs a new photograph and speculates on its documentary status as historicalevidence. Thus, Taner Ceylan's brilliant masterpiece enacts an imagined photograph which could have beenpossibly taken but has never been.This catalogue note is written by Cuneyt Cakırlar (University College London) and Serkan Delice (University of theArts London).

Catalogue Note on Taner Ceylan's 1879 (2011)

In this painting from his Lost Painting Series, following 1881 (2010) and 1923 (2010), the photorealist painter Taner Ceylan engages with the questions of history and Orientalism by creating yet another visual allegory. The mischievous gaze of the smoking Ottoman boy in 1881 and the homoerotic farewell scene in 1923 are followed this time by an ingenious montage of Pascal Sébah's photograph from the 1880s and Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World, 1866). In this intricately crafted oil painting, Ceylan juxtaposes different yet related histories of artistic style and connoisseurship to trigger a rethinking of Orientalism, femininity, the veil and the gaze. Recovering and drawing together forgotten legacies and silenced voices in a brilliantly imagined new setting, Ceylan invites the viewer to look behind the veil of Orientalism and the politics of representation. Rather than offering a corrective, the artist amalgamates irony, playfulness and realism to recast Orientalism as heterogeneous and susceptible to negotiation, contestation and even subversion

Çakirlar, C

Delice, S

Nottingham Trent Institutional Repository (IRep)

Contemporary Art / TurkishLondon | 7 Apr 2011, 10:30 AM | L11221LOT 14TANER CEYLANB. 19671879 (FROM THE LOST PAINTING SERIES)signedoil on canvas170 by 180cm.; 66 7/8 by 70 7/8 in.Executed in 2011.ESTIMATE  50,000 - 70,000 GBPCATALOGUE NOTEIn this recent piece from his Lost Painting Series, following 1881 (2010) and 1923 (2010), the photorealist painterTaner Ceylan engages with the questions of history and Orientalism by creating yet another visual allegory. Themischievous gaze of the smoking Ottoman boy in 1881 and the homoerotic farewell scene in 1923 are followed thistime by an ingenious montage of Pascal Sébah's photograph from the 1880s and Gustave Courbet's L'Origine dumonde (The Origin of the World, 1866).In this intricately crafted oil painting, Ceylan juxtaposes different yet related histories of artistic style andconnoisseurship to trigger a rethinking of Orientalism, femininity, the veil and the gaze. Recovering and drawingtogether forgotten legacies and silenced voices in a brilliantly imagined new setting, Ceylan invites the viewer tolook behind the veil of Orientalism and the politics of representation. Rather than offering a corrective, the artistamalgamates irony, playfulness and realism to recast Orientalism as heterogeneous and susceptible to negotiation,contestation and even subversion.Standing in front of L'Origine du monde, a now well-renowned oil on canvas painted by the French artist GustaveCourbet in 1866, the veiled lady wearing a transparent white yashmak and a wrapper (ferace) embellished by arather elegant stole is actually reproduced from an albumen photograph, which Ceylan relocates within his ownpainting. The photograph entitled Dame turque voilée (Veiled Turkish Lady) was taken by Pascal Sébah (1823-1886), the nineteenth-century Ottoman pioneer of photography, who photographed models for Osman Hamdi Bey'sambivalently Orientalist paintings, as well as for the photographic album of traditional Ottoman dress entitled theElbise-i Osmaniyye: Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873. Sébah was also well-known for his depictionsof order, prosperity and progress within a framework of Ottoman modernity as a unique, indigenous project.Ceylan's intriguingly novel setting in which the veiled Ottoman lady poses in front of Courbet's blatantly realisticdepiction of female genitalia further unsettles the politics of representation if one remembers the often neglectedfact that it was Khalil Bey (1831-1879), the Egypt-born Ottoman diplomat and art collector, who commissioned fromCourbet L'Origine du monde. The art historian Francis Haskell has shown that Khalil Bey, from the perspective ofhis French contemporaries, was no more than a profligate and frivolous art collector, "a prince from an Orientaltale...who remained Turkish through his lavish generosity and taste for women and gambling, but became Parisianthrough his wit, his elegance, his love of the theatre and the arts..." (Francis Haskell, "A Turk and His Pictures inNineteenth-Century Paris", in: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 5:1, 1982, p. 41) Khalil Bey's collection of more than ahundred paintings included such confrontationally realist works like L'Origine du monde and Les Dormeuses (TheSleepers), as well as a considerable number of works by those French painters (Chassériau, Marilhat, Gérôme,Ingres and Delacroix) who painted 'Oriental' subjects.Revisiting Khalil Bey's complex legacy, Taner Ceylan presents a seemingly stark contrast between the two femaleembodiments on canvas without necessarily reproducing a rigid gendered distinction between the East and theWest. In doing so, he challenges the representational status of the two bodies, as well as of the Orient and theOccident, by invoking the very multiplicity of desire in terms of both artistic gaze and taste in art patronage.The painterly rigour and eroticism in Ceylan's art-practice have hitherto drawn on many contemporary figures ofinspiration not necessarily limited to photorealists and hyperrealists. The baroque art of Caravaggio, the portraitureof Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, and the intermedial artistic practice of David Hockney can easily beaddressed in appreciating the artist's engagement with photographic embodiment. Ceylan treats the medium astableau vivant: he creates a fiction, documents it as an actual photographic image and translates that fictivedocument onto canvas. Compared to his early homoerotic works, however, precision and mimicry in Ceylan'spaintings gain a further dramatic meaning in the present work. Reframing Sébah and Courbet in such a peculiarmise-en-scène, the artist designs a new photograph and speculates on its documentary status as historicalevidence. Thus, Taner Ceylan's brilliant masterpiece enacts an imagined photograph which could have beenpossibly taken but has never been.This catalogue note is written by Cuneyt Cakırlar (University College London) and Serkan Delice (University of theArts London).

Catalogue Note on Taner Ceylan's 1879 (2011)

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