Bilge Alkor gathers her recent work around the theme of a “mirror.” She holds a mirror up to angels, devils, and therefore, in an indirect manner, to the “human being.” The works have been created using a variety of techniques… from oil painting to photography, photo-painting to collage, and pebbles. Before going on to the actual work, I would like to enter into Alkor’s world of art by way of one of her engravings. During the years she spent in Italy, for a short period of time, Alkor worked using this technique. However, she did not return to this technique in her later work. Still, the reason I would like to begin with this particular work is my belief that it can perhaps provide access to Alkor’s art in general.
The first thing we see upon looking at the work is a rapid movement from left to right, a flow of lines across the rectangular surface. Series of marks, both large and small, randomly placed along the lines. It is lighter where the marks are sparse; in some places they are denser to form a dark field. The darkest area is the black cloud in the upper left corner. Descending lines, giving the impression of rain across the surface.
The dark field conceals a number of forms that can be interpreted in a variety of ways: strange, nondescript figures, animal-like forms… The lines flow in a single direction, but form a complex composition. Closer inspection reveals lines nestling within each other; curving and overlapping, and taking sudden turns from their straight course. Is this the sea? Waves, perhaps? Is it the wind that changes its direction every now and then? What I clearly see (or believe I see) in the dark cloud is an angel’s wing, a dark face… but the most interesting figure I see is a raised hand, as if to say “stop!” The piece is called molto agitato. Agitato is a musical term meaning agitated and dynamic, and is used to determine the mood of a musical composition. The third and final movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata (Op. 27, No. 2) is an example: presto agitato. This movement is extremely fast and turbulent, and contains pauses and moments of calm. Following this, my impression of the work is as follows: there are no figures resembling the human being, we only see a part of the world inhabited by this being. We see the temporal experience of the human being, passing by within the rapid flow of life, and oscillating between dualisms.
The artist’s use of a musical term indicates that she has ventured beyond the visual field. As a matter of fact, looking back on her career, we see that she has produced work inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute, Schubert’s Winter Journey song cycle and Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. This is no random selection. The common point of these works, all different both in form and content, attracted the artist’s attention: the intermingling of truths and myths that encompass human existence. I don’t think it is necessary for me to say that Alkor’s paintings are no mere illustrations for literary texts. The artist reinterprets and visualizes the characters in works that have left an impact on her and led her to contemplation.
The focal point of “The Mirror of Angels and Devils” is also the human being; as it seeks concealment within myths and tries to make sense of the realities of its surroundings. The first paintings in the series are a variation on Dürer’s engraving titled Melencolia I. This work by Dürer is one of three engravings that are thought to form a series. The other two are Saint Jerome in His Study and Knight, Death and Devil. The most popular interpretation suggests that Dürer expresses the three attitudes towards life in these engravings: As opposed to the contemplative Melencolia I represents the active, intuitive stance; this is a stance full of progressive visions. Each work overflows with symbols in the context of its topic. The meaning of Melencolia I has never been fully deciphered and has been subject to many debates. In the engraving, a winged female figure sits, resting all her weight on the step; her hand leans on her temple while she holds a compass in her other hand. In her lap is a closed book. She gazes vacantly into space. A dog, curled up, dozes at her feet. Some have perceived the work to be a puzzle because of the small angel beside her and the various tools surrounding her. I will not attempt to explain or interpret the work since Alkor does not take up any of the symbols in the engraving. The debate that began with the question, “Why is the woman an angel?” has continued to the present day with each symbol being closely scrutinized, and new interpretations have constantly been put forth. The fact that melancholia was perceived to be an illness meant that the work attracted the attention of medical doctors too, and the engraving became subject to scientific essays, and it also a source of inspiration for many artists and writers.
One may ask why Bilge Alkor began her angel paintings by interpreting this engraving. I believe that this is the key to the central idea behind all her paintings.
Angels
Alkor does not use Dürer’s symbols. The melancholic woman is, as in Dürer’s work, an angel. Only the first of the paintings approaches Dürer’s in terms of content. The angel is in isolated space, entirely alone, lost in thought. Her head rests in her left hand; she holds an apple in the palm of her right hand. She has giant wings that cover almost the entire surface of the painting. The only symbol other than the wings is the apple. What could the apple symbolize? Nature? Life? Original sin? The mystery, or absurdity of life? Or perhaps all of these.
There are four Angels of San Marco. They are the angels that wander amongst the crowd in St. Mark’s Square during the Carnival of Venice.
Then come the angels who serve as messengers from God: Gabriel and Azrael. The angels that enable communication between God and human beings, the other world and this one. Symbols of the two main dualities in life: birth (good news) and death (bad news). According to the beliefs of monotheist religions, Gabriel is the messenger between God and his prophets. He is the Angel who delivers the good news. In Islam, Gabriel is the medium through which the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Gabriel accompanies Muhammad during Mi’raj, his ascent to heaven. In Christianity, Mary learns from Gabriel that she will bear Jesus. As for Azrael, he is the harbinger of death. In the other paintings, we see the angel as a clown. Why is the angel a clown? The clown is a figure in theatre that makes the audience laugh/cry. Since the first emergence of the figure, the clown has not only performed in theatre, it has been a centre of great attention and has featured in almost all branches of art, from literature to music. Alkor’s treatment of the angel reminded me of a story of a clown, written by Henry Miller. I must immediately emphasize that this short story, illustrated by Joan Miro, is unlike any other of Miller’s short stories. It is the thought-provoking, melancholic story of man’s deep and critical settling of accounts with himself: The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. In this poetic narrative, a very successful and popular clown suffers the frustration of not having achieved his goal. His goal is not to make people laugh or cry temporarily. He wants to teach of laughter. This is what he strives to do. The more he tries to make people laugh, the more they do exactly that. The more they laugh; the more the clown enters into a trance. No one realizes this at first. Eventually, they lose interest. He gets booed, attacked, wounded and bruised; he barely manages to save his life. The story ends with painful experiences, intense reckonings and death. In the final moment of his life the clown becomes aware of his tragic condition: He was not satisfied with making people laugh, and went beyond his own limits. He tried to teach people that another world, and happiness beyond laughter and sorrow was possible. Is this not, in a sense, measuring up to God? In the same way, Bilge Alkor’s angels are also failures and unhappy… In the series titled The Story of the Angel we see the bitter end of an angel, and how the angel destroys herself in despair…
The Devil
Considering she began the series of angels with Dürer’s Melencolia I, one may have thought that Alkor would have interpreted the devil in Dürer’s engraving in the series of devils. It is true that the main figure in Knight, Death and the Devil is the knight; but the devil in the engraving is a ghastly, grotesque figure, the combination of a donkey, a hog, a stag, a bird etc. But a devil-figure in this style could not have been the artist’s point of departure. Her view of the devil is quite different from her view of the angel. Alkor’s angel was melancholic, it was a failure, and unhappy. Yet the devil perfectly fits the term “devilish.” The term has both positive and negative connotations. Alkor’s devils constantly change their disguise. They cut, they fit, they deceive, they are masters of all manners of trickery; but they also provoke creativity in human beings. They refuse to become slaves; they set an example in daring to say “no.” Transforming such qualities into virtues is a matter of personality. From this viewpoint, one could claim that the devil is of benefit to humans. The artist has written the word “Lucifer” on three large oil-paintings. Lucifer is one of the names given to the devil in Christianity. Of Latin origin, the word means light-bearer. The devil has many names, but they do not have auspicious meanings. Lucifer is the only name of the devil that may be considered auspicious, since it indicates light and illumination.
There are three paintings in the “Lucifer” series. The artist has used familiar symbols in these: wings, horns, the snake etc. The trickery and deceitfulness of the devil is perceived in the photographs of the collages Alkor has produced with pebbles. Just like the angel, the devil has its own story,. These works are also photo-paintings. I mentioned above that the artist’s view of the devil is more positive than her view of the angel. However, the end of the devil’s story is sad too. “The devil narrates,” begins the series. “Once upon a time.” And the story begins. The devil creates a creature similar to himself. This creature is a woman. Is this because he does not want to be alone? Or does he want the devils to reproduce so that they can stand up to the angels? Perhaps. Since the woman then becomes a pomegranate. The pomegranate is the symbol of fertility. In the final frame, the new creature is buried in the dark night, half-illuminated by streetlights.
Colours and Symbols
Colour is used for its symbolic value in Alkor’s paintings. The angels are generally blue, and the devils are red. Looking at each painting individually, tones, tonal transitions, and other fields of colour added to the main colour assume symbolic functions and produce differences. For example, the joyful, vivid colours of Gabriel indicate at first sight that he is the bearer of good news, whereas the melancholic dark colours of Azrael reveal that he bears bad news. Looking at the Melencolia paintings, the first painting and the colours of the angel of death transmit the same type of sadness. A despondent view of life and the end of life… In the first series, the darkening tones of blue and dark red and the scattered black marks symbolize the melancholic posture of the angels. The angels are always pensive, introvert, melancholic. However, there are moments when they manage to shake off their melancholy. We see this to a certain extent in the Angels of San Marco. The colours are brighter. A bright green is added to the blue. The white spots on the wings lend a unique air to these angels. Especially to Gabriel, the bearer of good news… Alas, the angel will not meet a good end. Let us look more closely at the first painting. The figure of the angel fills up the surface of the canvas. We understand that the figure is in isolated space from the grey-blue field of colour in the upper right corner of the painting. This is also the method used to reveal space in the other paintings of the series. This is not a bright sky. It is overcast, just like the inner world of the angel. At the lower part of the painting there are flower-like forms, difficult to decipher, that sit within red, blue and black daubs of colour. The most distinctive form is a cube. In the foreground of the cube, amongst intricate lines, there is a figure resembling a bird. Looking at it in the context of the paintings in this exhibition, I interpret it as a crow. The reason for this is that the crow is used as a symbol of the impending end in “The Story of the Angel” as well. In the “Winter Journey” paintings mentioned above, the crow symbolized death. Therefore, in the artist’s visual dictionary, the crow is the symbol of impending death, or the coming of the end.
I would like to open a bracket here to draw attention to the style of drawing used for the crow figure we took from the “Winter Journey.” The wings of the crow, that stretch open to both sides to cover the entire surface of the painting are emphasized with straight, round, waved, thin and thick lines. They overlap to form rectangles and narrow angled triangles of various sizes. The artist visualized the “Winter Journey” paintings where poetry and music combine by interpreting Schubert’s song cycle. The depth and movement on the painting’s surface corresponds to the progress of the overlapping lines of musical notation. This correspondence (the rapid flow of lines and the formation of various layers by the overlapping of surfaces) reflects the bird’s flight in space. The engraving we focused on at the start of the essay shows that even at the beginning of her career, the artist contemplated and sought a response for the problem of visualizing thought. She seeks solutions according to the topic and the possibilities her choice of material offers. In the angel and devil paintings she produces the depth/movement on the surface of the painting by the overlapping of daubs of colour, thin/thick lines, marks and similar forms, and also by light effects.
Narrative and Staging
Alkor’s paintings are based on narrative. Therefore, she designs her compositions as stagings, in the exact same manner as a theatre play. This is valid for all her paintings, but is more emphasized in her photographic work. Real life and fictional life are treated as intertwined, and this is where the story emerges. In other words, she combines the fictional story she creates with real life. Those who assume roles in the stories of devils and angels are people from real life. In the story of the devil, in the upper row, a Venetian landscape has been inserted amongst the frames that show the devil. A canal… A bridge… Waves glistening in the sun… People looking down from the bridge… In the second row, this time it is not the devil, but his creation, the woman, that stands in front of the same bridge. The figures standing at the foot of the bridge are wearing conical hats. This tells us that the story takes place during the carnival. The Carnival of Venice is based on an ancient tradition. It is an annual festival where masks are a main feature, and it has a history going back centuries. For this series of works, the artist travelled to Venice during carnival and took photographs. (Let us recall here the Angels of San Marco). The story of the angel quite probably takes place in Venice, too. The angel is a beautiful woman. First she is in a room, in front of a fireplace; then in an old building with light shining through its windows; and later she destroys her wings and they turn into light and fly away. Later on, she is under the trees amongst greenery, in a cemetery. The tombstone is the statue of an angel. The postures of the devil and the angel, their movement, the expression of the actors or the masks – according to the flow of the narrative – are all exceedingly theatrical. It is evident that their soul-searching has brought them suffering. In the story of the angel, in the frame next to the tombstone there is a crow, the harbinger of the end. In the final frame, the angel is in semi-darkness, in front of the fireplace we see in the first frame. She sits with her head bowed, she covers her face with her arms. At the end of the story, the devil is also in the dark. His face is covered in black, it appears to be lifeless, but still he stands. Has the angel given up, is the devil resisting? The questions remain open-ended… this very brief account I have provided of the stories of the angel and the devil leave a lot of open ground.
The Witnesses series is even more thought provoking. Portraits of devils and angels. Collages made of pebbles. Who and what do they stand witness to? As I mentioned above, the angel is disguised as a clown. But he does not laugh; he has tears in his eyes… Whereas the devil constantly swaps disguises, becoming a clown too… He laughs; and the expression on his face suggests mischief. He seems self-satisfied.
Looking at the works in the exhibition as a whole, we get the feeling that we are watching a theatre play from start to end. Since the events take place in Venice, the play could have been called “Carnival in Venice.” The actors are people dressed up as angels and devils. The clown is the main character. He plays both the angel and the devil. The clown makes us both laugh and cry. In our story, he plays two separate characters. One is the angel, and the other is the devil… They hold a mirror up to humanity. The angel tries to help people, like in Henry Miller’s short story. He tries to compete with God. He fails. The devil stands up to God. Can he serve any purpose by standing up to God? Perhaps, if he is thought of as the “bearer of light.” It depends whether the one who looks in the mirror can make use of the light.
Alkor’s paintings are highly thought provoking. At the beginning of the essay, I focused on an engraving she produced in her early years in order to unravel her artistic intention. My aim was to show that she had sensed, even in the days of her youth, that it was necessary to adopt an attitude, a stance towards the vagaries of life. In recent years she has begun to think about her experiences. This has led her to a settling of accounts with life, or rather, with the realities of life and her inner world. The search for a way to remain standing within the flow of life as it swiftly changes… “The Mirror of Angels and Devils” is the artist’s most recent work. It is based on the artist’s worldview, the attitude towards life. There is a lot of open ground for the viewer. Questions multiply during the process of perception; reflections in the mirror diversify. If the paintings are viewed as a whole, and within their context, viewers shall find new dimensions of perception during the viewing process, and shall perhaps see themselves in the mirrors.
Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera is one of his two final works. The opera was completed in 1791, and staged in Vienna the same year. Compared to Mozart’s other operas, The Magic Flute is multilayered, contains different dimensions of perception and is thus very much open to interpretation. The interest in this opera has not waned at all since 1791, the year in which it was first staged, to the present day, its subject matter has been treated with a new viewpoint in every period; and the opera has been staged with different interpretations in which one or more of its layers have been given prominence. Especially in recent years, we have read about/witnessed its main characters not only wear contemporary clothes but be equipped with accessories such as sunglasses, backpacks etc. and even enter stage on bicycles or toy cars. It has become an indispensable condition of staging for directors to form a link between older works and the present day. Even changes in subject matter are now taken naturally, as long as they are executed in a convincing manner.
I believe that Bilge Alkor’s “The Magic Flute’”paintings put forth a brand new interpretation of this opera. We know Bilge Alkor from her interdisciplinary works. First the characters of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest; then the lieds of Schubert’s Winterreise and now The Magic Flute are products of her interdisciplinary works. In other words, first theatre, then poetry and music, and ultimately, opera, which we could describe as the most comprehensive branch of art… We know that in these works, Alkor delves deep without distorting the integrity of the subject matter, and seeks the essence. So, does her approach in “The Magic Flute” paintings also follow the same lines? Is her interpretation aimed at conveying a certain purpose? In other words, does she seek to draw attention to a contemporary issue? Or is it about a dimension of perception added to the paintings by the viewer (in this instance, by me)? In this article, I will first try to focus on the paintings in the context of subject matter, and then leave the response to this question to the reader.
Love, Power, Wisdom
Let us first take a quick look at the subject matter. At the first stage of perception the subject matter creates a fairy tale impression in the full sense of the word. Reality has been kneaded with fairy-tales, and historical, mythological and Masonic elements. The events take place in Ancient Egypt, in an environment dominated by the cult of Isis and Osiris. Pamina, the daughter of the Night Queen, is kidnapped by the men of Sarastro, the Sun King. Tamino, a young and handsome prince, loses his way in the forest, and faints as he escapes from the dragon on his trail. The maids of the queen hear his cries of help, kill the dragon to save him, and inform the queen. The queen shows Tamino a picture of her daughter, and asks him to save her. Tamino falls in love with Pamina the moment he looks at the picture, and promises the Queen he will rescue her daughter from the evil Sarastro. The Queen gives him a magic flute. She presents him with Papageno, the Bird Man, as a companion. The Three Wise Boys who descend from amidst the clouds in the sky will guide them in moments of stress so they can succeed in their quest. However, once Tamino arrives at Sarastro’s palace and speaks to his priests, he understands that Sarastro is not an evil man. Sarastro’s aim is to test Tamino, wed him with Pamina and have him succeed to the throne. One of the priests is not sure whether Tamino can pass the test, and asks Sarastro, “Do you think he will pass the test? He is a prince.” Sarastro answers: “Beyond that, he is a human being.” Unaware of all this, Tamino passes various tests to meet Pamina. Meanwhile, the Night Queen, driven mad with her desire for revenge, orders her daughter to kill Sarastro. However, Pamina won’t fulfil her order. She knows that Sarastro is not an evil person. Her love for Tamino is great. Tamino passes all the tests and unites with his lover. Yet they will face the greatest test with Pamina: to pass through earth, water and fire. Thanks to the power of the magical flute, the two lovers succeed in this challenge as well.
The pattern of the subject matter I have related in rough outlines, acquires further colour and deep meanings with events such as Monostatos, one of Sarastro’s men, falling in love with and harassing Pamina, Papageno’s search for a girlfriend, the wise boys rescuing Pamina and Papageno right when they are about to commit suicide in despair. From this viewpoint, the opera is both entertaining and educational. This is why the public’s interest in the Magic Flute has never waned. Fairy-tale-like elements such as wild animals that suddenly fall silent and seek cover with the sound of the magic flute, entertaining folk songs that stick in the mind at first hearing, Papagena, who first appears before Papageno as an old lady, suddenly becoming young, etc., led to the opera being treated for many years as a musical fairy-tale, or a children’s opera. However, the deep dimensions that emerge during the process of reception led to this opera becoming subject to many researches and being staged with a great variety of interpretations. What are they? The three main concepts clearly seen in the first stage of perception are, love, power and wisdom. These are weaved with contradictions from life to form the subject matter: the clash of the forces of light and dark; good – evil; love, passion – hatred, revenge; the positive-negative aspects of roles ascribed to women and men by society; intellect and nature; the stance against life of two different sections of society – Tamino-Pamina, Papageno-Papagena –; enlightenmentism, freemasonry – fascism, racism etc.
Are these all part of the essence of the subject matter? Or are they perceptual dimensions discovered over time? What did Mozart and the librettist of the opera, Emanuel Schikaneder want to express? It is known that Mozart was a freemason. On the basis of the Masonic elements and symbols in the opera (the repetition of the number three in the text and music, three doors, three ladies, three child-spirits etc.), that Sarastro symbolized freemasonry and the Night Queen the dark forces, was a theses proposed in the earliest commentaries. There was strong opposition against enlightenmentism that had spread across Europe following the French revolution, and all enlightenmentist ideas in conservative and intensely Catholic Austria. Masonic lodges were placed under surveillance and members were stigmatized. It is possible that Mozart and Schikaneder created a fairy-tale like atmosphere for the opera in foresight of such danger. However, this is only a single aspect of the work, and does not provide a sufficient answer for certain parts it contains which remain open to interpretation.
This is perhaps the reason why The Magic Flute –after Don Giovanni– has become the opera that has attracted the interest of painters most. Especially 20th century painters have shown great interest in this opera. Oskar Kokoschka, Marc Chagall, David Hockney, William Kentridge and Karel Appel are among painters who have produced stage designs for The Magic Flute. One could add to these names, however, these artists worked in tandem with the director on the dramaturgy to create their designs for the stage. Yet there are also painters who, independent of a staging, produced paintings only of characters or scenes of the opera.
Let us now turn to our artist’s paintings. Alkor has faithfully depicted the opera, as if she were producing a stage design. Some of the paintings are abstract, while others are figurative. She has used a variety of techniques: oil-acrylic, photo-painting and photography. For each person she has imagined a mask befitting of their character. However, the main characters have not been included in this process: The Night Queen and Sarastro, Tamino and Pamina. They have both masks and full-size paintings. The paintings of the Night Queen and Sarastro are abstract. In the text, the Night Queen is referred to as the “sparkling Queen.” In the painting, large and small stars, sparkling amidst various tones of a nocturnal blue, delineate the outlines of the Queen figure, and surround her completely. Sarastro appears before us in warm sun colours from yellow to red. Tamino is a slender, elegant young lady. Barefoot, wearing a black dress, and a mask with a heading on her head, which covers more than half of her face, her head slightly tilted forward, she plays a flute she is holding. Pamina is a baby with eyes swollen from crying. The painting Tamino falls in love with at first gaze is, just like the text describes, placed within a frame embroidered with glimmering colourful gems. In another painting, Pamina has placed her hands on her knees, her head is tilted sideways, and she sits, exhausted, desperate, and unhappy. Papageno, with his huge colourful wings, is a bird to perfection. In Papagena’s paintings, when we look up from the lower part of the painting, we can follow how she changed into a happy, beautiful woman. The artist creates this effect with faces that emerge from the black area in the lower part of the painting, which are only half-visible at first and then gradually completed as they come into the light.
Tamino and Pamina
Both characters are in a manner we have previously unseen in other The Magic Flute interpretations. In the opera, Tamino is an inexperienced, handsome prince. Yet in our painting, he is a young woman. How should we interpret this? Pierre Audi, the director who has staged The Magic Flute a few times at different times in different theatres, describes Tamino as a colourless, naïve type. An unsuspecting, indecisive, naïve child who falls in love with a painting at first sight, and believes the Queen’s words without giving them any consideration. According to traditional discourse, a man has no fear. Could Bilge Alkor have interpreted Tamino like this? This is the first interpretation that comes to mind. Yet in the opera we see that Tamino undergoes a great change. There is a great change in his life after he sees Pamina’s painting. For the first time, he understands what love is and experiences it intensely; he takes all kinds of risks for his love for Pamina. He passes through various tests, and he learns to keep silent, patient, and to persevere. Once an inexperienced child, he becomes a mature adult. These virtues are unique to “humans.” Let us remember how Sarastro said “He is human” about Tamino. So virtue, strength, and the path that leads to wisdom through love, are one and the same for man and woman. Thus Pamina traverses this path with Tamino, and passes the test. As the first woman admitted into Sarastro’s temple, she is declared Queen by Sarastro. King and Queen, Tamino and Pamina, they are both women. What could be the idea behind this odd situation? Let us repeat the main concepts the subject matter is based on, we have already mentioned “power, love and wisdom,” we can now add “change and virtue” to these. Are these qualities unique to men? Of course not. They are found in both sexes. Thus, seeing and presenting Tamino as a women expresses a stance against gender discrimination, and that being “human” is not a quality unique to men.
As for Pamina… In the painting the Night Queen gives to Tamino, Pamina is unhappy. She is crying. Why? Her love for her mother was boundless until she gave him the dagger to kill Sarastro. She believed her. She wanted to escape from Sarastro’s temple, and go back to her mother. When Monostatos caught her escaping with Papageno and turned her in, she told Sarastro that she escaped because Monostatos had harassed her, and pleads with him to forgive and release her. Sarastro replied, “You love someone else very much. You and your happiness would be killed if I left you in your mother’s hands.” Events move on, and the Night Queen, blinded by revenge, curses her daughter. Pamina no longer believes her mother, but Sarastro. It becomes more difficult to explain why Pamina appears unhappy in her painting in the context of this plot. In the painting, Pamina, in contrast to Tamino, is not a living being made of flesh and blood, but a doll. Pamina, just coming out of childhood, also undergoes a “change” like Tamino. The deep “love” they feel for each other takes them to maturity and happiness. Does this image of the doll express the fact that Pamina, when by the side of her mother, was a characterless, dull girl who could not even realize that she was unhappy? Perhaps. The doll comes to life with the deep love she feels for Tamino. The masks of Tamino and Pamina seem to affirm this perception, because despite formal differences, they are very similar in terms of content. In other words, the content emphasizes the closeness of the two young people to one another in essence. The colours are the same. Pamina’s mask features a crown made of dry leaves above the eyeholes, and a small red heart beneath her eyes, where the mouth would be. It is a very thin mask; it is placed on a light-coloured background adorned with elegant branches. The crown on her head is made of dry leaves. On the surface of the painting, visible on both sides of the mask, there are flowers…
These are the main characters of the opera, and they are connected more to the text rather than the music. The paintings form a whole with quotes from the libretto. In my opinion, there are two large oil paintings that delve into the essence of the text and directly reflect the music: The first is the painting of the magic flute. The second is An Offering to the Magic Flute’s Music. These two paintings complete each other. It seems as if the essence of the subject matter has been concealed in these paintings. The magic flute, which is the focal point of the opera and lends its name to it, has been carved from a thousand-year old tree by Pamina’s father, to provide protection for her. It will now protect the young couple that are attached to each other with a deep ‘love’ in the tough test they face. In the painting, the flute lies horizontally in the exact centre of the painting. Sound waves in various colours emanate from the flute to cover the entire surface of the painting. The second painting is formed according to the web of symbols featured in the opera, in precisely the same manner an opera overture is formed as a mesh of the themes of the opera; the colours of the Night Queen and Sarastro feature alongside each other. There are glittering stars in the exact centre of the painting, scattering in all directions in a rapid cyclical movement in the dark blue space, emphasizing the same cyclical movement… The symbols of the Night Queen. Triangles pointing to the sky… The symbols of Sarastro. Contrasting colours dominate the painting, in other words, opposing forces feature together. Symbols intermesh. When Pamina tells Sarastro she wants to go back to her mother, he replies, “I hold sway over her,” regarding the Night Queen. Then he adds that women will stray from the right path if they are not given orders by men. Pamina’s father (The Sun King) gave the sevenfold sun disk to Sarastro as he lay dying, and entrusted his wife and daughter to him. This meant that the order of night and day was disrupted. The Night Queen wants to take all power into her own hands by capturing the sun disk. However, we learn right from the start, from Pamina and Papageno’s duet that it is the bond of “love,” which elevates woman and man together to divinity. Woman with her heart, and man with his intelligence complete each other. Sarastro has kidnapped Pamina on a premonition; Tamino and Pamina will pass the test, Sarastro will give the sun disk back to them, and the old order of night and day will be re-established. This painting could be perceived, in line with the essence of the subject matter, as the previous order where universal peace holds sway. However, if we imagine Tamino as a woman, all dichotomies will disappear. Since women have intelligence and heart, the union of opposite sexes “that complete each other” would no longer be necessary. The opera ends with light holding sway over dark forces, and the Sun King over the Night Queen. In this new interpretation, the finale of the opera has been changed. Two women, committed to each other, having overcome the toughest tests together, will realize universal peace. There is no end to dreaming, who knows, perhaps then we would have a brighter, happier world where the lust for power and revenge was unknown.
To tell the truth, it is striking that in our age when women are rising against the patriarchal social order that has been in place for centuries, such an interpretation has, for the first time, come from a Turkish artist. If The Magic Flute were to be staged by a creative director with Bilge Alkor’s stage design, such a product would undoubtedly be “a first.” A very significant interpretation in our age when masculine gender continues to be questioned, and women continue to rebel against the system.
A relationship based on their “non-verbal” nature has now and again been proposed between the melodic structure formed by the rise and fall of musical tones in music, and the “abstract” order formed by tones of colour to unify the composition. As music, the most abstract among the arts, interprets nature and human spirit via sound, and accompanied by melodic structure, it converges with what the painter strives to achieve without emulating nature, and accompanied by purely abstract forms. However, although this convergence can be pre-programmed, it can also develop around indirect connections; the painter might turn to the canvas under the influence of a certain musical piece, a musician might also create a composition inspired by a work of a painter.
Matching the Aural and the Visual
Yet if an overview of well-known examples reveals that an orientation from painting to music predominates in the relationship between these two arts, a significant reason for this is the more widespread nature in terms of artistic process of the practice of transforming aural forms in music particularly into abstract forms in painting. Abstract painters like Mondrian, Klee and Mathieu went beyond former examples in which the connection with music was restricted to transferring a scene from a concert onto the canvas to seek “direct” transitions between sound and the plastic structure of colour and form, and thus, in a sense, chose to match the “aural” and the “visual.” In this sense, it was more the abstract painters who led the path in furthering this association, and seeking a deeper relationship.
Bilge Alkor, too, who in her previous work revealed the versatile meaning of painterly form, with her new works in acrylic and mixed media on paper and canvas, departs from the stimulating function of music to provide proof that she is a member of this generation of artists. In this exhibition, she finds inspiration in Schubert’s lieds based on Müller’s Winterreise texts. Although at first glance the work appears equidistant to both, it is evident that Schubert’s compositions serve as a potent source from her application of a method that can express the inner senses particularly in those paintings featuring tones of black with the sporadic use of speckles.
An Evocative Richness
When the totality of landscapes, open to observation and impression throughout the journey, and settling in visual memory within the flow of time meets with music, it is enhanced with evocative richness; this is the stage where the spell of music comes into play. As Can Alkor also points out in his catalogue text, the fact that the lied, as a musical form, is itself “a product of an exchange” between poetry and music inevitably highlights the sensorial aspect that at first gaze reveals its predominant nature in Alkor’s paintings, and plays an effective role in emphasizing the transition process from text to music, which is consolidated by the notes added below the paintings.
The black speckle is in fact an element which invites the viewer to contemplate how dreams imagined in the company of music can only be transformed into the real world via a metaphor of travel, and perhaps, despite the entire poetic nature of the subject matter, create the impression of some kind of nightmare, leading on to suspicion and anxiety. This dilemma not only reinforces the fact that the patterns in Bilge Alkor’s paintings are signs of life, but also embraces the viewer with the latent meanings concealed behind these heavy black speckles that melt and spread out across the surfaces of the paintings and gradually assume a “symbolic” quality.
Poetry and Sound
Alkor’s paintings in her new exhibition may be perceived as visual notes to a travelogue interpreted along with Schubert’s music. Thus, we encounter a phenomenon that assumes new dimensions at every new stage, extending from poetry to music, and from there to painting, and weaved by different artists at every step. The selection of a method in accordance with this multidimensional structure in places where various elements such as intervention by hand, drawing and collage have been used, situates Bilge Alkor’s compositions at a further focal point of meaning: The previously established dialogue between poetry and sound is a plural form of “expression” that necessitates the referencing of two distinct arts. Thus, this particular expression once again brings forth the rule that the phenomenon of reality it departs from cannot be interpreted from an absolute viewpoint.
My close involvement with Bilge Alkor’s works began in 2007, with a visit I made to her studio for the upcoming “Modern and Beyond” exhibition held at santralistanbul, and I was highly impressed by the rich intellectual aspect of her work.
Bilge is an international artist who has opened exhibitions in many European cities including İstanbul during her long professional artistic career. She is a thinker who works in painting, music and photography in tandem, who is capable of seeing their interconnections, and believes that they nourish each other. From the audience’s viewpoint, her work goes beyond mere visuality, and provokes thought.
To assess Bilge Alkor’s work only as paintings is bound to fall short. Music, literature, photography and cinema, in their wide scope, have become part of her thought. Hers is the interpretation of a multilayered world dominated by all forms of art. Closer perhaps to philosophy. This assessment, of course, depends on the viewpoint, and the viewer’s background.
Bilge Alkor studied at academies in Istanbul, Rome and Munich, observed examples of world art in museums, read texts on art, and developed an interest in philosophy, and upon this comprehensive background, discovered her own unique form of expression. Therefore, her work deserves to be understood as an oeuvre where, in addition to a multidirectional, rich formality, an intellectual approach takes precedence.
When assessed in view of such qualities, Alkor’s works reveal their rich substance that cannot be restricted to locality. In terms of the history of painting in Turkey, her work can be located within the subjective figuration of the post-1980s generation, and the abstract work of the same period. However, her work can more be seen to treat inner experience with an expressionist style.
Modernist artists in Turkey, who were trained in accordance with the formalist approach of the “d Group” and adopted late-cubist views as theory, perceived abstract art as a free approach to composition, colour and rhythm, and formal experimentation. Subject matter is selected from the environment or everyday life, or may be related to Anatolian Civilisations. The emphasis is on the use of the tools of the art of painting. Less importance is given to the relationship between composition and the meaning of the work, which appears to be superficial.
In contrast to this, Alkor’s work stands outside the conventional trajectory of the art of painting in Turkey, which associates modernism with formalism; and corresponds to the post-1980s period when individual differences began to emerge. The post-1990s are a time when artist in Turkey showed greater interest in the international art scene, and sought their means of expression in a wider framework. With her multidirectional, multilayered approach, which sought relations between the arts, Bilge Alkor was among the pioneering artists of this period. Bilge’s approach to art should certainly be addressed within the framework of universal values. Another aspect that should not be overlooked is her proximity to the European cultural environment. Bilge’s source of inspiration is the intellectual tradition of the European art scene.
The artist’s experimental period in Munich impelled her towards a sentimental exploration and different subject matter rarely seen in abstract art in Turkey. This subject matter, related from the very beginning to literature and music, are grounded in a rich intellectual perspective. In Alkor’s work, it is meaning that stimulates the artist, and takes precedence over other elements. Her subject matter readily testifies to this. The message bears importance, and this is not merely a technical matter. Alkor, too, most certainly, endeavours to use the unique tools of the art of painting. However, unlike formal abstractions based on nature, it is “abstractions she attains departing from meaning” that form the foundation of her work.
An overview of Bilge’s oeuvre, beginning with her early work, reveals the strong connection between the titles she gives her works and their content, and how they provide clues to the viewer about what, and how the artist ascribes meaning to, and provokes thought by unfolding relations and options. The main theme of each work has seemingly been determined in advance. This approach is valid for almost all her works, thus “mental pre-composition takes precedence over formal pre-composition.”
For instance, in her works titled Alter Ego, and her eponymous work inspired by E.T.A Hoffmann’s novella published in 1820 titled Princess Brambilla, Bilge Alkor’s subject matter is a second personality, a companion soul one creates to overcome loneliness, narrated within a fantastical setting, an uncanny world. Figures depicted in large masses in Alkor’s works such as Eros and Caliban Triptych are also creatures of this world.
Another work, titled Janus, orients the viewer towards the mythological god of time who is depicted as having two faces, emphasizing the abstract and concrete aspects of reality. The double and secret personalities we observe from her early works on orient us towards masks. In my opinion, masks (personas) occupy an important place in Bilge’s work. Looking at her works in various media such as painting, photography and stones, we observe a wide spectrum of such masks that develop and vary, turn their gaze towards the viewer from unexpected corners of the work, assume different functions and augment the meaning of the work. This is an act similar to narrating the story of, assuming the powers of another, or replacing it. In Bilge’s work, figure appears before us as a mythological or literary form, or a form that makes us think that it bears probable references to the world of memories.
As for the paintings she made in the period from 1980 to 1990 which she spent in Germany, large, uncanny figures, at times depicted as transparent shapes, swiftly appear and disappear thanks to clues provided in works such as Adam’s Dream, The Angel of Death, The Queen of the Night and The Hidden Ring, and also The Heavy Night, where a reclining couple who recalls a petrified timelessness has been depicted. The artist successfully uses transparency to create this affect. Yet, transparency is certainly not the alone here: Opaque paint accompanies it. But somehow, it is that evanescence, that lightness that leaves a lasting impression. The application of paint, based around certain gestures, is developed in harmony with meaning and intention.
Silence and The Sleep of Reason could be perceived as homage to Goya, as in Goya’s famous capriccio The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. This work also features the face of Juno, a mask. Rather than formal similarity, Alkor concurs with the great master in meaning.
The artist has also made landscapes, although they are few in number. Internalized images such as Ovindoli and Termessos, from her period in Italy, could be considered among this group. The later Night Again features a figure with its back to the landscape. However, the painting does not depict night, but a landscape that gives hope. Night, then, must be a sentiment of the figure in the foreground.
In Bilge Alkor’s paintings, space contributes greatly to the narrative. Space is an environment within which figures strive to exist, reflecting their troubles, and used successfully by the artist. The uncanny large figures in the foreground of the paintings are alone, in endless sleep, dramatic, withdrawn, and loaded with impenetrable secrets. They seek to remind the viewer of this, and almost warn him or her.
In her paintings, Bilge Alkor restructures photography as a tool that renders an imagined reality tangible, and adds pictorial authenticity to it. She also uses photography as a tool that assists in the transition to pictorial language. Both in painting and photography, the technique used for expression involves intersecting, multilayered superimpositions.
Musical Forms – Compositions
One could propose that Bilge Alkor, who from 1958 to 1961 worked [studied] at the Munich Fine Arts Academy, felt an affinity to Kandinsky’s ideas. In one interview, she mentions that during her time in Germany, she read books on both the works and artistic theories of the “Der Blaue Reiter Group,” and especially Kandinsky and Klee, and that they formed the cornerstone of her art.
The artist’s series, inspired by Shakespeare’s plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tempest, Schubert’s Winterreise lieds and Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera, in which she conceptually combines music, painting and the stage, are among the most successful examples of interaction between different disciplines of art.
Inspired by the plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tempest, “Journey from One Art to Another,” the title Alkor chose for her exhibition held in 1996 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre, could be considered as an early sign of her ideas in this field yielding concrete results. Characters such as “Titania, the Queen of Fairies,” “King Oberon” and “Bottom” take their places in her work both in name and as figures.
In “Winter Journey,” a series produced from 2000 to 2005, not only the titles, but also textual and visual clues concealed within the work, act as “poetic” links that consolidate meaning. In this series, dominated by winter tones, and in which the line occasionally takes precedence as an element to express meaning, all images complement each other, and collectively form continuity. Using emphasis and softness, and powerful contrasts, the artist conveys music to the canvas. In this series, which I would be inclined to describe as her masterpiece, the temporal aspect is related to the dissemination of the image across the surface of the painting, and with the concept of continuity in music. Both on the surface and in the depth of the painting, the composition is formed and given meaning with an ebb and flow movement related to time.
As for “The Magic Flute” featuring, among others, “The Queen of the Night,” “Sarastro,” “Papageno the Birdman,” “Tamino,” “Pamina” there colour and elusive transparency dominate. “The Magic Flute” is the work that perhaps best fits Bilge Alkor’s words when she says, “The world of dreams has always been an important leitmotif in my works.” The painting takes the viewer on a tour of a dream universe.
I belive that Bilge Alkor’s work, with the unique approach and interpretation it displays, occupies a privileged place in the contemporary painting scene. This advanced and deeply sophisticated body of work is the outcome of a viewpoint she has continued to develop since the early period of her artistic career. Alkor’s work occupies a special place in our painting with concepts and a worldview with outstanding sensitivity.
The poet Auden finds that only composers are primary creators. “All the rest translate” he says in one line, meaning poets, painters, and story-tellers.
The privileged position assigned by Auden to music may seem a bit exaggerated, and perhaps one might go a step further and defend the proposition that composers, too, are translators; for the view that all art includes a translating function can hardly be dismissed as trivial.
There is an approach which starts with the Post-Romantics, goes on from one end (if such there be) to the other of the modern period, and with the Post-Moderns truly comes into its own: the tendency for creation to deal with creating, with the act of creation, and indeed with the creative territory of others.
In speaking of translation, inspiration, the creative spark or “establishing a dialogue,” I trust it is perfectly clear that no reductive judgement is intended on my part. And selecting a few works as a point of departure should not take us beyond the words of Archimedes: Perhaps not “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the earth,” but at least “Give me a partner and I will expand my own limits.” Henceforward, the other is an excuse for a voyage toward myself.
Bilge Alkor’s new exhibition at the Atatürk Cultural Center (and it will gain an added dimension from her concurrent exhibition of photography at the Maçka Art Gallery) is entitled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream/The Tempest:”An exhibition which has arisen, blossomed and put forth from Shakespeare’s two plays.
One must first speak here of a “project”: these are not the sort of paintings having that natural coherence which comes from being executed during a given period, not the kind of work which is first begun and only later baptised. No, what we have here is a premeditated, consciously built exhibition.
Has Bilge Alkor set out to illustrate two Shakespeare plays? Hardly. Her aim is rather to read Shakespeare; independent of the classical systems of reading, breaking through that “left to right, top to bottom” approach which Rimbaud teased (or mocked), she has given us a profound, oblique reading which staggers the viewer.
Perhaps this is why one hesitates to call what Alkor has done an essay at translation, or somehow an interpretation. During an interview with Cevat Çapan in this month’s issue of Arredamento Dekorasyon, the artist sheds light on the way she works. Her original, one might even say forced, approach to Jan Kott (like Cevat Çapan I have my reservations here), along with Peter Greenaway’s adaptation Prospero’s Books (here too I do not see eye-to-eye with Alkor), underlie her demonstration that the dialogue she has established is many-faceted.
Bilge Alkor does not stand outside the subject to comment or interpret, nor does she see (or show) from her own self as center; rather a trip through the entire exhibition makes one think that she has chosen to remain within Shakespeare, to purge herself of all interpretations to date and take on the pure, bare state of Word and Image, there to become once more “incarnate” – that this is something she has not only done, but dared to do.
The hardest thing about the classics are those judgements which so easily are brought up, yet somehow elude our grasp. How readily one takes refuge in “To be or not to be,” yet when we reach for it the thing is suddenly transformed, and we are tormented wondering just what sort of thing it is.
Alkor’s exhibition is precisely a documentation of this searing pilgrimage. The superb Shakespeare translations of Can Alkor certainly have been of help to the artist, but it is the viewer yielding himself up to the swirling currents in this hall who most benefits from them, as a kind of precious key.
Thanks to this we come to see more clearly just what kind of fire Bilge Alkor has dared to hold in the palm of her hand, holding it there with no cooling. And we realize how the most innocent-seeming text, the most guileless-seeming lines, can drag us to the edge of madness.
It behoves us, however, not to dally overlong with words. Better to consider them, if required, on their own in a seperate space. Here in the exhibition hall they occur alongside the canvasses, usually outside their frames. Yet there are times when the artist has included them in the picture, like a forehead’s jewelry, an umbrella or canopy. Yet she imposes a boundary on them, saying, “These were there to begin with, and now we have these,” drawing the viewer into her creation.
Yes, now we have color, form born of color, and voices which are sometimes muffled by form, sometimes released. Since the 1970s I have done my best to follow the work of Bilge Alkor, in whom from the outset I have detected a dilemma which she constantly probes between mass and the void. My impression is that her research is into a harmony or balance which she can bring about only by opposing to matter and materially visible that which is more elusive. Hers is an eye which darts from water to stone, from the body to its shadow, from reality to dream, always caught between these poles, taking them both in. It is not even clear which arises out of which, or which is the “real” version of the other. I believe that this artist enjoys leaving her work suspended.
In swimming slowly toward Shakespeare’s isle, negotiating a wide sea, Bilge Alkor has been well honed by her extremes, between water and earth, water and fire, fire and air. The exhibition bears the marks of an absolute modulation. Who has slept this deep and lovely sleep? Who has been so harshly, fretfully awake? These dreams, do they come from the playwright, these daydreams from the artist?
The portraits of Caliban – from the rear, walking, sitting, standing and vaguely moaning (I can hear it) – make me realize that the artist in the end has truly met up with him. Unknown to us, but it has reached the artist. Another artist beside me, Fatma Tülin, remarks on how no black is used in The Prince of Darkness, and on the shiver this sends through her. Somewhat further ahead another poet, Ahmet Oktay, speaks of red the murderer and gray the victim, and of the region between.
Still further on men and women “come and go, talking of Michelangelo.” I am riveted by Titania, a triptych which I feel could well be placed in one of the world’s great museums.
By now it is night. The lights of the hall are out, its keepers have locked up and gone down, the artist gone home after a long, tiring day. In the dark and silent hall, as the city flows by outside with its roar and light, the canvasses are beyond, and begin to stir. Prospero’s voice carries defeat, Caliban’s a kind of melancholy, while Titania’s is divided between merriment and despair. Among all these voices, Night, Sleep and Dream have found their true spaces.
Bilge Alkor’s wind-storm of a show is like a mirage in the desert.
Cevat Çapan: It’s a question of cross-pollination among the arts. A poet may be inspired by music, or a novelist look at a painting and get his idea. When you ask a playwright what his or her starting point was, you get different answers. Maybe something happened to them, so they sat down to write a play. Another playwright will say, “While I was in the army we went to a church, and a mural I saw there inspired me to write.” So little bits of reality or specially intense moments may crystallize in this way. The history of world art offers many examples of such interaction; and people working in the same branch of art are influenced by a predecessor, taking his work and refashioning it to reflect the intellectual complexity of their age. Some great masters provide inspiration to all the artistic generations that follow them – and Shakespeare is among these.
Looking at these pictures, we see that they emanate from two Shakespeare plays; A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. Plays with a very interesting cast of characters. Oberon, Titania, Puck, Caliban… And there are some with supernatural powers, like Ariel and Prospero. Which shows that Shakespeare’s world is one which reflects reality in an all-embracing way. There are real characters, but also those from the land of faery, more than real, or not real. This has prompted some to say that Shakespeare is not a realist but a romantic. His comedies are so described even in text-books. But a closer look reveals that infact these plays are realistic in the broadest sense of the word, with a realism that also includes dreams and the imagination.
The paintings have shown to me just how important a part of reality this dream-like quality is. Needless to say, they are not sketches done by a director planning to stage the plays, nor by a set or costume designer. We have here a much more original type of creativity, of inspiration. But if the pictures are inspired by the plays, it is in a manner which in no way detracts from their originality. So it might be appropriate to talk about what kind of inspiration this is.
Bilge Alkor: First of all I was inspired by that realism you mentioned finding in Shakespeare. A realism of the fantastic. A few years ago I did a painting inspired by Yunus Emre, Incarnated as Flesh and Bone. I get the same feeling from Shakespeare’s characters, with their profound, extremely complex layers of psyche. The cry out for incarnation in flesh and bone.
CÇ: Shakespeare’s works are so rich that they really do satisfy that idea of incarnation we find in Yunus.
Someone who encounters Shakespeare, let’s say an actor or actress, they may be content merely to utter the beautiful lines. Or an author who is greatly cut off from his surroundings may select out just the dark elements. Or a Hollywood scenario might make Macbeth into a gangster. This is perhaps a kind of “struggling” to express various separate features of Shakespeare’s world. But I think a better approach is that “incarnation;” how Shakespeare’s characters live in their natural settings, and how their relations with other persons as a whole reveal themselves through their awareness of, and response to, those natural surroundings. In this sense much can be done by an art like painting, which has the power to express physical reality.
BA: I fully agree. And this power varies in richness according to the character. Let’s take Prospero and Caliban. The former is a Renaissance aristocrat such as we see in the portraits of Rafaello and Tiziano, so there is little difficulty in imagining his face and bearing, even his clothes. Whereas Caliban is much more complicated, and in my view not a depraved character. You’ve seen the film Prospero’s Books. I feel that Greenaway’s slant was way off the mark. There Caliban was just an evil djinn bending and wavering like some bodiless smoke. To me he’s a native of the Bermuda Isles, downtrodden and suffering, a king deprived of his kingdom. In short, a bundle of unfulfilled potential; and so more “photogenic.” Indeed, the Caliban triptych is called Identikit. Prospero, now, if Jan Kott is right symbolizes the end of an age, the vanishing of hopes. A sort of Faust or Leonardo who finally realizes that magical powers will not suffice to create a proper world. A tragic figure, certainly, but not in the play, where he merely works to exact revenge. He is only great at the very end, in the monologue which one thinks of as Shakespeare’s own. How do you see it?
CÇ: That’s a very interesting approach. Trying to follow Shakespeare’s career from beginning to end, we see that there’s a perpetual conflict between light and dark. This dialectical division appears as light and shadow, or literally light and darkness. When he writes the tragedies the scales tip in favor of darkness, while in the comedies there is light. But Shakespeare was not an author who wrote comedies to speak purely of light, or tragedies to speak purely of darkness. Knowing that the two are intertwined, he set aside the classic definitions of the genre. The tragedies have fools, and several of the comedies have a distinct dark side. And then there are the histories, which Shakespeare wrote throughout his career, describing civil war and some of the darkest days of England. But in comedies written at the same period there are incidents implying a cheerful world. As Shakespeare matured, however, this ceases to be a simple contrast, and there is a definite process of evolution. Thus the last comedy, Twelfth Night, is melancholy; and yet it has features from all the previous comedies: change of identity, a girl posing as a man, twins… All the tricks he had used one at a time in earlier plays suddenly are brought together. Meanwhile the tragedies cease to be a simple matter of revenge, becoming stoical. King Lear probes the limits of human endurance. The questions return: How much can a person stand? Is readiness all, or ripeness? Perhaps it was living in the age he did that made Shakespeare round out his plays with this pessimism. As the palace lost control of events following the death of Elizabeth, and as intrigue possessed the court, the tragedies become darker. And King Lear may be the most embroiled of all. But is this Shakespeare’s last word, the way he finally sees the world? In the later plays, which we can call romances or plays of reconciliation, we see not only dark, tragic elements, but also the light of the comedies. The jealousy, death and loss which mark the tragedies are here, but in the latter half of the plays there is forgiveness, an entente with reality and the world.
BA: But not in The Tempest.
CÇ: Certainly this reconciliation is not of the exuberant kind that appears in the comedies. Not, as there, a happy ending; yet the curtain does not close on utter despair. Prospero’s closing speech is a kind of return to the light. At least that is my reading of it. Because we see a movement there, from the dark towards the light.
BA: I see it as just the opposite, as if the play were reverting to its start. Natural laws will obtain, the incidents will begin anew. Prospero, too, senses this. But now there is nothing he can do about it. Actually, a kind of order now obtains. Caliban is aware of his misdeeds, Miranda and Ferdinand are together at last, playing chess, and Prospero himself is Duke of Milan. Everything is so upbeat at the end, but that final speech…
CÇ: There’s another thing, though. They experience disaster. If they’ve learned what they’ve been through, if that knowledge can stand them in good stead later, this could be taken as redemption.
BA: I hadn’t thought of it that way. Meaning I have a more pessimistic view.
CÇ: Jan Kott brings Shakespeare together with Beckett, and reads certain Shakespeare plays as being absurd. I believe this shows how even in Shakespeare’s day life could be interpreted from many different angles. In your paintings I find the same richness of expression.
BA: They’re an attempt to reflect Shakespeare’s complexity…
CÇ: One of the plays is a comedy, the other has both tragical and comical elements. Comparing the two, can they be seen as comlementary? Why these two plays?
BA: These are my favorite plays from Shakespeare. I think I’m especially open to a mixture of nature poetry and the “supernatural.” And I should add a note about A Midsummer Night’s Dream: There’s an important theme running through all my works on the realm of dreams. As for certain characters and situations in The Tempest, to me they are “archetypes” – something I also find in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, by the way. There Prospero is Sarastro, while Ferdinand and Miranda are Tamino and Pamina. They have to pass through a trial by fire, just as the lovers in The Tempest cannot come together without a test. Monostatos is a sort of Caliban. In Prospero’s phrase, they “are such stuff as dreams are made of,” yet real.
CÇ: Now there’s an interesting point here. In Shakespeare what we see, and the reality that lies behind it – one might say various extensions of reality – give the play tension and dramatic power. And in a pictorial medium this is one of the things which shows the power of painting. If it were otherwise, painting would have died out after the invention of photography. When I saw your paintings, I felt that they reflected a sensual world. Of course Shakespeare’s plays are very rich intellectually, there’s no argument about that. He’s an author of philosophic depth, but at the same time so sensual. When it’s a question of Eros, the personages are real flesh and blood. Smells and colors are so important, and the sense of touch. Very few playwrights have approached Shakespeare in this regard.
BA: That’s true. All this makes me think of Oscar Wilde and the Truth of Masks. I have another exhibition coming up, which again is based on Shakespeare. It’s of photographs taken at the carnival in Venice. A carnival is a play in which one’s everyday persona is hidden behind masks and costumes, where repressed drives are staged according to their own rules. And whenever any play is staged, it is impossible not to find something of Shakespeare in the festival of costumes, colors and motion. At the same time Venice is a backstage calling up images of that Renaissance world which one constantly senses in The Tempest, even if it is not seen. In short, reality is presented in Shakespeare not only with words, but also sensually and visually. I don’t agree with Artaud when he reduces Shakespeare to psychology and the textual theater, for I feel that what matters in those plays is not so much the characters and their lines as their inner voices, the tensions, and the situations by which these are revealed. In that respect the plays of Shakespeare seem highly modern. Eros, for example, who was in my opinion the backbone of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I made my Eros triptych headless: there are bodies, but their identity is unknown, anonymous. There is a transformation, a confusing, of identities which Hermia is unable to solve (“Am I not Hermia, are not you Lysander?”). After Romeo and Juliet the Eros of A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes as a great surprise. What’s your reading of this?
CÇ: Now there is a gradual tendency in Shakespeare to confuse reality, and this can be treated in a more linear fashion by considering Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Anthony and Cleopatra. A theater or director with this concern might stage these three plays consecutively in one season. What do we learn from this? The youthful love of Romeo and Juliet, although sex is part of it – indeed, the sexuality is very powerful – nevertheless has a certain innocence, while in Troilus and Cressida things are more complex, that love cannot be all that innocent. And in Anthony and Cleopatra, the lovers have gained an immense degree of experience. The love there is mature, expressed with all its problems and complexity. The last play is of course the most successful of the three. Getting back to Artaud, I think his interpretation stems from the French attitude toward Shakespeare. Perhaps they are against him simply because he is rarely staged in their country. If mediocre performers see Shakespeare merely as a chance to intone great speeches, and show off their gestures, it’s only natural that Artaud will object to him. But I must say, the theater of savagery which Artaud demands is most strikingly seen in Shakespeare. Think of all the examples: King Lear, where Gloucester’s eyes are put out; and then Titus Andronicus and Macbeth. In 1956 Peter Brook got together an experimental group in London, with which he did “Artaud studies” at the same time he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Theater. This was just as the Theater of Savagery was working up Marat-Sade. With that group Brook created his own version of the theater Artaud demanded, while at the same time he used elements which smacked of Beckett. In staging King Lear, Brook also was mindful of the affinity between Shakespeare and Brecht. Of course one realizes that Jan Kott also learned something from Peter Brook.
BA: Then they’re a bit like Prospero and Ariel, or Oberon and Puck.
CÇ: And in fact Caliban is one of their company.
BA: Well, there you have it. There are very real characters among us.
CÇ: That’s sure. That’s why Peter Brook’s approach to Shakespeare is so interesting to me, especially when combined with the way an artist – in this case Bilge Alkor – sees the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest, not to mention how Ariel and Puck can appear as meaningful characters, or what colors they might take on – again, in the hands of an artist.
BA: The tradition of these characters go far back. Puck, for instance, is straight out of the Commedia del’Arte. So I painted him with his character hidden behind a mask.
CÇ: One might think of Arlecchino.
BA: Precisely. A mocking figure, who turns the laws of the universe upside-down, makes fun of them, and above all entertains himself. Compared to him I find Ariel much more of an aristocrat, far more lyrical.
CÇ: More “literary,” perhaps. These words derive from Prospero’s books. A more difficult character for the painter to grasp, much more difficult to depict.
BA: A figure whose character is more clouded, one might say murkier. Harder to give in tangible form. I tried to capture Ariel as an eddy the wind forms and disperses, a rose compacted of wind. And Oberon I imagined as a scarecrow. As a scarecrow might be able to assume Oberon’s character, or Titania lying in the weeds take on the form of a beast (think of Ovid’s Metamorphoses). To me, these are the truths inherent in great myths.
“Allow me right away to ask you, dear reader, haven’t there thus far been hours, days—nay, weeks—when daily tasks haven't given you anything besides boredom and discontent, and when everything you believed in and valued lost its meaning?” (Hoffmann, 2021: 25)
This article will examine Bilge Alkor's interpretation of romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tales. Although the painter's point of departure is the writer's works, her technique and her manner of interpreting images makes for an original language. It is also important which images Alkor uses to draw connections with today's world when interpreting Hoffmann's tales.
In the early 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling discussed the concept of the uncanny in his book Philosophy of Mythology, reading Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Sandman" through this lens. According to Schelling, uncanniness is “the name given to something that should remain hidden and concealed but that is out in the open." (Freud, 1999:327-351) Ernst Jentsch carried this concept over to psychoanalysis in 1906, placing doubt as to whether a being or object is living or non-living at the heart of the uncanny. Automatons and wax sculptures, Jentsch argued, exemplify this phenomenon. In his 1919 article titled "The Uncanny" (Das Unheimlich), Freud added to this definition the return of the repressed and associated the concept with childhood memories.
The concept of the uncanny, put forth by Sigmund Freud in 1919, evokes that which is not frightening and yet inspires fear and horror. Uncanniness has to do with the person's past and opens up a corridor in time. The relationship of the frightening with the past and the fact that the object is not unfamiliar to the person render the uncanny rather complex.
“It is to leave the reader in uncertainty and to do it in a way so that the reader's attention is not directly focused on this uncertainty; that way, the reader cannot directly intervene in the issue and solve it quickly.” (Freud,1999: 333)
The concept of the uncanny is associated with a sense of insecurity and mental uncertainty due to an inability to adapt to the environment. This concept, in Hoffmann's tales, is the threshold between reality and fantasy, and this threshold is formless. As the figures mutating in the fog of uncertainty push the limits of the mind, the extraordinary becomes ordinary. The aim of this article is to explore the way some of the major images in Hoffmann's tales appear in Bilge Alkor's painting language and to look into the evolution of the images in this regard. The stories in question are "The Doge and the Dogaressa", "Princess Brambilla", "The Sandman", "The Golden Pot", and "Mademoiselle Scudéri". The images featured in these stories that emerge in the paintings can be listed as the skull, the sea, the mysterious man in a cape, the dress, the carnival, the mask, the eye, the snake, the apple, the elder tree, the dagger, and the jewel.
THE MYSTERIOUS FIGURE
The tale titled “The Doge and the Dogaressa” was first published in the 1819 book Die Serapionsbrüder. It is the story of the eponymous painting that was featured in the Berlin Academy of Arts's 1816 catalogue. The painting of the old doge and dogaressa is located in front of the view of Venice. Furthermore, the poem etched into the painting's frame reveals the secret meaning of the painting.
“Oh! Loveless
It crashes into the sea
With the sea's husband
Unconsoled” (Hoffmann, 2021:278)
The crowd in front of the painting is discussing the purpose for which the painting was made. A mysterious man with a grey cape overhears this and starts to tell the story of the painting. The whole story is related by the man in the grey cape. The main characters of the story are Doge Marino Falieri and his wife Annunziata.
“Deep within the self of an artist is a peculiar mystery that causes a picture to form. Such images, which, up until then, linger in a fog in the void and cannot be defined for their lack of form, find their forms deep in the artist's soul and come alive, as though they have finally found their home." (Hoffmann, 2021:279)
There are two stories working in parallel here. The first is that of Antonio, and the second, that of the Doge.
The child of a noble and rich family, a boy named Antonio is orphaned. When his father is murdered by his enemies, Antonio is left in the custody of a friend of his father's. One day as he is sleeping in the garden, a snake slithers up to him. Another child, noticing this, kills the snake, thereby saving Antonio's life. The story from the past ends here. In the other story, Doge Marino Falieri marries a young and beautiful woman named Annunziata. Before Marino Falieri becomes doge, he gets into a situation in which his boat is about to be capsized, and Antonio saves his life. Antonio and Annunziata fall in love with each other at first sight. The second story is joined to the first when it is revealed that Annunziata was the one who saved Antonio’s life as a child. As for the Doge, he is among the murderers of Antonio’s father. As the two lovers attempt to run away on a gondola, the sea swallows them.
The Doge, who says in the beginning of the story that he is married to the sea, is thus avenged by his spouse, the sea.
“Ah! Senza amare
Andare sul mare
Col sposo del mare
Non puo consolare” (Hoffmann, 2021:278)
THE NANNY
The nanny figure in the story enables both Antonio and the two lovers to recognize each other. However, just as in Hoffmann’s other tales, the nanny's face is transformed. While in some of the writer's tales this is caused by magic, in this one it is a result of torture by the Inquisition.
The face, body, and bearing of the nanny in the story, Margareta, resemble those of a freak. This is because the healing aspect of the woman is framed as a sign of evil by her enemies, and she undergoes torture following her trial by the Inquisition. The nanny is an important figure who foresees everything and guides Antonio.
THE SEA
The voiceless main character of the story is the Adriatic Sea. The sea is so attached to the Doge that it mercilessly kills those who betray him. A hallmark of Hoffmann's tales is that they do not have happy endings. While it is stated in the tale that Antonio dies, the man in the grey cape is intimated to be Antonio and this mystery is left unresolved.
As stated in the poem below the painting as well, Doge Falieri is in love with the sea, which resembles a fierce, jealous, and somewhat unstable woman.
Figure 1: Bilge Alkor, "Doge ve Dogaressa" [The Doge and the Dogaressa], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p.15, Istanbul, 2022.
The sea, which almost capsizes the Doge's boat in the beginning of the work, swallows up the boat of the two lovers at the end. Alkor uses two images to convey the power and rage of the Adriatic Sea. The first is a paper boat. Located on a black background, the boat is in the middle of the blue squiggly lines that symbolize the sea. The blue lines are about to encircle the paper boat.
The other image that depicts the sea is the woman's body with a skull for a head. The woman is wearing a sea-blue dress and holding two intersecting circles. The two circles, symbolizing the two lovers, indicate that the lovers' fate is in the hands of the sea and presages their deaths. The motif of the circle also connotes the line that cannot be crossed and alludes to eternity.
THE MASK
Bilge Alkor represents the two lovers through masks. Annunziata is symbolized by a beautiful woman mask, which is rendered with the texture of cracked soil, whose red lines and curves portray Annunziata’s love for Antonio. The mask that symbolizes Antonio is red and orange, with the eyes made up of light spectra created by the refraction of light. The light filtered through the crystal is the reflection of the past.
Another tale that features a mask is "Princess Brambilla". In the story, which is inspired by a painting, the mask is a means of concealment and transformation. It is the distance placed between the true self and the representative self.
PRINCESS BRAMBILLA / THE MAGIC DRESS
E. T. A. Hoffmann's story “Princess Brambilla” is based off of Callot's capriccios, and, in the story, the carnival and masks are metaphors in and of themselves.
A seamstress girl named Giacinta is preparing a dress for the carnival together with her old master. The dress is so magnificent that they think only a princess can wear it. Blood and kerosene are spilled on the dress, but the stains disappear on their own. When Giacinta tries the dress on, she looks like a princess.
Figure 2: Bilge Alkor, Prenses Brambilla/Büyülü Elbise [Princess Brambilla / The Magic Dress], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 176, Istanbul, 2022.
The dress, which gets rid of stains on its own, constitutes the threshold between the real and the fantastical worlds in this fairy tale-like story of Hoffmann's. Giglio Fava is a poor theater actor who is in love with Giacinta. He sees Princess Brambilla in his dream and falls in love with her. He will pursue his dream throughout the story, which proceeds in the manner of a carnival.
The acid-soaked prints of Jacques Callot (1592-1635) that inspired Hoffmann feature unusual images featuring thin, elongated figures. In these mise-en-scenes, Callot portrays marginalized figures and the follies of mankind. (Gombrich, 2004: 385).
Translating the story into the plastic arts, Alkor hangs the symbolic dress on a hanger with a large hook. The blood stain is big enough to be visible amid the silver sparkly material. She who wears the dress takes on its soul. The mask symbolizing Giacinta is beautiful and embellished with carnival make-up. A yellow star hangs down from the forehead toward the space between the brows. Though Giglio may see himself as a talented actor, he is nothing more than a jester. Alkor conveys this idea through the jester's hat on the head of the actor form. Transparent areas express how the person sees themselves and how they really are. Further, the neon red heart protruding from the ribcage conveys the intensity of Giglio's love and its powerful influence.
Alkor has used the photo-painting technique in interpreting Hoffmann’s fairy talesque stories. Forming collections of objects, Alkor has arranged and photographed them, transferred them onto a computer, and painted over the photographs. According to Alkor, Hoffmann is the pinnacle of fantastical realism.
THE EYE –ALCHEMY-THE SANDMAN
Another story taken up in the context of the uncanny is "The Sandman". Published in the book Nachtstücke in 1817, the story tells of the re-emergence in adulthood of a childhood trauma. According to Freud, Nathanael's childhood fear of castration is reshaped through the uncanny images he sees later on in life.
“The Sandman” tells the story of a monster haunting a child whose father dies in an explosion at home when the wrong substances are mixed during an alchemy experiment.
The sandman figure belongs to an old fairy tale that has been told through the ages to scare children who won't go to sleep at night. The sandman throws sand at children's eyes, after which the children get so sleepy that they cannot open their eyes. According to certain myths, the sandman collects the eyes of those children who don't want to sleep. Children thus shut their eyes tight out of fear of this figure.
The man who conducts experiments with Nathanael’s father is called Coppelius/Coppola, and, according to Nathanael, Coppelius is the sandman himself.
“He was a non-imaginary, despicable monster and everywhere he went he brought unhappiness and not temporary but eternal destruction." (Hoffmann, 2021:104)
The years go by fast after the father passes away. Nathanael is in university when he encounters Coppelius, this time as a salesman of barometers, glasses, and binoculars. He sends a letter to a friend expressing his shock, but the letter finds its way to his girlfriend, Klara, who tells Nathaniel that there is no such thing as the sandman and that alchemy experiments, not a monster, caused the death of his father.
“This is a ghost created by our minds, and it elevates us to heaven or hell with its close relationship to us and the deep effect it has on us.” (Hoffmann, 2021: 111) Nathanael is of a different opinion than Klara. For him, life is made up of dreams and premonitions.
Nathanael falls in love with Olympia, the daughter of Professor Spalanzi, from whom he is taking classes. Just as he is about to marry her, he witnesses a quarrel between the professor and Coppelius. “Coppelius stole my best automaton—twenty years' work—I gave it my life. The cog work, the language, the locomotion—it's all my doing—the eyes...” (Hoffmann, 2021:133)
Word gets out of this in academic circles. Nathanael cannot believe what he is experiencing. The professor disappears so as not to be prosecuted for tricking human society by putting an automaton in their midst. Time goes by, and it seems like Nathanael has forgotten all that he has gone through. He is back with Clara, and they are preparing for their wedding. After a walk, they go up to the municipality tower to look down on where they live. At that moment, Nathanael lifts the binoculars he bought from Coppola to his eyes and loses his mind upon what he sees or thinks he sees. He tries to push Clara down, saying "Spin round, wooden doll!" Clara is saved by her brother who arrives at the scene in time. Nathanael jumps off the tower and dies.
The Sandman/Coppelius/Coppola is the figure that kills love. The story reflects examples of experiments with alchemy and the creation of automatons in the 19th century.
English poet Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem on alchemy speaks of how so many have been consumed by the pursuit and harmed by their endeavors:
“Listen to
My words and steer clear of alchemy
If you don't understand it there's no sense to what the philosophers
Say but should you want to be selected
The world's dumbest man continue on blindly
For no one can penetrate that secret” (Öndin, 2017: 19)
Perhaps what is meant is just bad alchemists, those who allow for the supremacy of demons. Every substance is purported to contain four elements (air, water, fire, earth). The alchemist contends he can alter these ratios to produce gold, and conducts experiments for this purpose.
The beautiful Clara is represented in Alkor's lines in the same form but in different colors. Nathanael’s love features in the picture through the red roses. In time, Nathanael is to fall in love with the automaton Olympia, and, even further, to believe in the myth of the Sandman. The mentally unstable Nathanael has been unable to overcome his past trauma, and the psychological damage he has suffered has taken over him.
THE AUTOMATON
Bilge Alkor has initially preserved the integrity of Olympia's form. She has conveyed that Olympia is a wind-up doll through the crank at the back. Though her head has remained the same, her body has been represented with all her accessories. The perfect face and the perfect eyes that have been extracted symbolize a deformed body image. Olympia’s eyes remain with Coppola—just as in the myth of the Sandman, the monster who collects the eyes of naughty children.
Figure 3: Bilge Alkor, Kum Adam [The Sandman], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p.142, Istanbul, 2022.
Alkor has conveyed the mood and repugnance of Coppelius/Coppola through physical deformity. Coppola sells spectacles and magnifying glasses. Collecting children's eyes in the world of monsters, this creature has a similar job in the world of humans: the sale of glasses and binoculars.
Professor Spalanzani’s face recalls African masks. While the dents and lines on the mask convey lived experience, it is also the case that the automaton the professor introduces as his daughter resembles himself. Meanwhile, Nathanael is nothing but a puppet with empty forms where his eyes should be. He has been hypnotized and is filled with traces of the past. Both the presence and absence of his eyes bear references to the spiritual. The puppet is that which cannot act of its own will and is instead under the influence of other forces.
THE SERPENT-THE ELDER TREE
Published in 1814, "The Golden Pot" is, in the author's words, "a fairy tale set in our time". Made up of twelve sections consisting of twelve night shifts, it tells the story of Anselmus's gradual descent to frenzy. That the author intervenes as a character in the story enables an identification between Anselmus and Hoffmann. The writer's characters wander between the superficiality of daily life and the magical effervescence of the supernatural.
The student Anselmus bumps into a woman selling buns and apples as he's walking in a hurry. As he tries to apologize to her, the woman takes all of Anselmus’s money and, on top of that, makes a prophecy.
“Run off then, make yourself scarce, you devil's spawn -soon you will enter the glass- enter into the glass.” (Hoffmann, 202:31) The old woman's prophecy is to come true at the end of the story. Having lost at once all his money, which would have made for a good day, Anselmus sits down under an elder tree and curses his clumsiness. Right at that moment, three green serpents slither down to him, accompanied by the sounds of crystals. Anselmus falls in love with one of these serpents. Around the same time, the university vice president's daughter Veronika falls in love with Anselmus. The far-fetched stories he tells of snakes and the sounds of crystals makes her think he is insane.
Figure 4: Bilge Alkor, Altın Çanak/Serpentina [The Golden Pot / Serpentina], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 103, Istanbul, 2022.
The father of the snakes is called Lindhorst. An archivist, Lindhorst is actually a lizard and the father of the serpents. Anselmus starts to work under the archivist. That way, he will be able to get close to his youngest daughter, Serpentina. The archivist wants to marry his daughter off to Anselmus. Though Veronika is against all these developments, she is powerless to stop them. Anselmus marries Serpentina, whose dowry is a golden pot containing white lilies. White lilies and the golden pot are presented together in Bilge Alkor's work. The lily is sometimes associated with virginity and sometimes with eroticism. It symbolizes purity. A lily growing in a golden pot reflects the light of the rainbow onto its surroundings.
Bilge Alkor represents Lindhorst with a rusty and sorrowful mask. The rust and dirt reference his profession. The lizards that Lindhorst claims as his origins are represented through diamonds and precious stones, while Serpentina is represented at times as a snake with a woman's head and at times as a rainbow-colored supernatural creature with neon green eyelashes.
Regarded as the manifestation of the moon, the serpent is treated as the protector of the tree of life. “The serpent is the manifestation of the moon—it sheds its skin and is rejuvenated; it is immortal, a force that disseminates fertility and science. It is the serpent that protects the sacred springs, the tree of life, and the Fountain of Youth. But it is also the serpent that has taken away the immortality of man." (Beauvoir, 2021: 187)
The writer characterizes Anselmus as a happy person who has shed his burden by the end of the work.
This is the final phase of frenzy or the discovery of a different world. It is a completely different and colorful dimension outside of the traumatic drudgery of everyday life. The struggle to make a living, lovelessness, and mundanity besiege people with all their force.
The mundanity of everyday life is criticized in the beginning of the work as well. The fantastical universe spawns difference, be it through alchemy or through a relationship with insanity. Anselmus’s existential anguish is in fact the common plight of humankind.
THE ELDER TREE
Besides being the first place and context where Anselmus first has visions, the elder tree has throughout time been associated with sorcery and evil powers. The interior of the elder tree erodes very quickly, and it is believed that evil spirits live inside it. Therefore, one must not break off the branches of an elder tree. If branches are broken, it is believed the evil spirits will pour out and that evil will spread.
Figure 5: Bilge Alkor, Altın Çanak/Mürver Ağacı [The Golden Pot / The Elder Tree], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 47, Istanbul, 2022.
In her work on "The Golden Pot", Bilge Alkor has brought the elder tree and Anselmus together. The surface of the earth to which the tree stands rooted has been covered with purple flowers. The trunk of the leafless tree has been rendered with a color turning from grey to black. Anselmus figures between two elder trees as a wooden puppet wearing green clothes.
The elder tree is the symbol of Hecate and tells of curses and the state of having been convicted or condemned. Another superstition is that one must not sleep under the elder tree, which has evil spirits living inside it. According to legend, those who sleep underneath the elder tree have terrible nightmares and even go insane. It is also said that a flute made out of elder trees enables communication with the dead. Elder trees are also supposed to be the optimal material for making magic wands.
Falling asleep under the elder tree, Anselmus lives through the prophecy of the apple seller. According to the prophecy, Anselmus will be trapped in a glass bottle. Bilge Alkor depicts Anselmus as a puppet inside a glass bottle. The choice of a puppet to represent Anselmus is due to his acting outside of his own free will and under the influences of other forces.
THE APPLE SELLER
The nanny, the knower, or the apple seller is a prominent metaphor in Hoffmann’s fairy talesque stories. The relationship of the author's metaphors with the past bears clues relating to the present. For example, in Ancient Greek mythology, Iris comes to a gathering she has not been invited to and throws an apple onto the guests, saying that she brought it for the most beautiful woman. The apple marks the beginning of a period of chaos whose repercussions will extend all the way to the Trojan War. A symbol of disobedience of God's orders and of material pleasure in the Bible, the apple functions as a means of deception in fairy tales. The poisonous but splendid-looking apple given to Snow White leads the princess to sink into a deep sleep.
As for Hoffmann's tale, the scattering of the apple seller's apples spells the beginning of disaster. Later on in the tale, it is seen that the apple seller is not just an apple seller but a witch in disguise. Bilge Alkor depicts this witch, who uses her powers for good, with a gilded mask. Light refracted through the crystal flitters on the mask. While the apple and bun placed near the mask convey the woman's apparent livelihood, the fact that this not her real occupation is indicated through the use of the mask. Alkor has depicted the sage woman who can transform herself into a door knocker in this mode as well.
The daughter of the university vice president's daughter, Veronica, is in love with Anselmus. With her beauty and her ornamentation, she resembles a porcelain doll. The witch, who is Veronica’s nanny, is looking out for the young woman's interest. The witch, like the nanny in Hoffmann’s “The Doge and the Dogaressa”, is unrecognizable in appearance. The nannies recognize the children they have raised, but the children don't recognize their nannies. In both tales, the nannies are sage figures, which is why they have been shunned to the margins of society. In “The Doge and the Dogaressa”, the nanny has been tried by the Inquisition for witchcraft and had her skin peeled off as punishment, while in "The Golden Pot", the witch has been subjected to ostracism and social isolation.
MURDER
“Mademoiselle de Scudéri” is the story of a murder set in the 17th century in the hotbed of crime, Paris. The interesting events that happen to Mademoiselle de Scudéri, a writer of novels about heroism, constitute the plot of the story. The story takes off when a mysterious man comes to Mademoiselle de Scudéri's house in the middle of one night and leaves a case containing a box of jewels. In the end of the story, Mademoiselle de Scudéri clears an innocent person of charges and sheds light on the murder to reveal the true killer. She becomes the hero of a text whose story she writes herself.
The 17th century witnessed difficult to solve murders with the advent of technological developments. The increase in chemistry and alchemy experiments is correlated with that in criminal activity. A poison is discovered on accident during alchemy experiments. This poison is so potent that it kills without leaving behind a trace. The Italian chemist Exili who finds the odorless and tasteless poison teaches the recipe to a lieutenant while in prison. The lieutenant kills all his enemies using this poison as soon as he gets out of prison but dies when he accidentally sniffs the poison as he is making it. This mode of death spreads. Everyone is suspicious of one another.
“Murder, like a sinister and invisible specter, seeped in everywhere, even the narrowest of circles characterized by family, love, and friendship relations, and snatched up its unfortunate victims with the utmost precision and celerity.” (Hoffmann, 2004:22)
The poisonings stop when Exili’s last student dies and the list of people he sold the poison to is secured by the police. But this time, it is jewelry theft that is terrorizing Paris. The jewelry thief stabs his victims in the heart with a dagger. Urban legends proliferate about how the shadow-thief can disappear into the walls or appear from the ground out of nowhere. All of the stolen jewelry belongs to Paris's most famous jeweler, René Cardillac. In a discussion of the murders, Mademoiselle de Scudéri says that “A lover who is afraid of thieves is not worthy of love." (Hoffmann, 2004: 34) These words find their way to the thief himself, who sends Mademoiselle de Scudéri a box of jewels along with a letter of thanks.
Jeweler Renè Cardillac is killed one day as the murders rage on. The prime suspect is Cardillac’s apprentice, Oliver. The jewelry murders thus reach an end, but things are in fact not at all as they seem. Oliver says that he will tell his story only to Mademoiselle de Scudéri. It is revealed that Oliver's mother is Mademoiselle de Scudéri's goddaughter.
Oliver reveals that after started working under the jeweler René Cardillac, he began to develop feelings for his daughter, Madelon. Sensing this, Cardillac threw Oliver out of the house. At a loss about what to do, Oliver wandered around the house when he saw a silhouette going through a mysterious door. He followed the silhouette, only to discover that it was Cardillac. Oliver witnessed Cardillac commit a murder, upon which, Cardillac took him back in and their relationship grew more and more tense. René Cardillac says that he feels a sense of calm when he takes back the jewels he has made. The person who kills Cardillac, in turn, is one of the customers he has attacked.
In Bilge Alkor’s interpretation of “Mademoiselle de Scudéri”, blood-stained jewels and skull-shaped pendants are placed together. The skull in particular is a metaphor that was commonly used in painting and sculpture in the Middle Ages when the plague pandemic led to mass deaths and there emerged what were called Ars Moriendi (The arts of dying well). The skull functioned as a Memento Mori, an object to remind one of one's mortality. The expression of the jewel in skull form suggests that worldly riches will only last until death, and that death is the only abiding truth. In the images which feature the dialectics of death and life as well as that of the precious and the worthless, the jewels, for all their sparkle, evoke death. What makes the story extraordinary is that the murderer is a jeweler. The last person to be suspected is both the thief and the murderer.
Figure 6: Bilge Alkor, Matmazel Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudéri], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 228, Istanbul, 2022.
Bilge Alkor has depicted Oliver with a chain around his neck. At the end of the chain hangs a diamond pendant in the form of a skull. Alkor has thus expressed that Oliver's profession is to determine his destiny. Moreover, the metaphors of the heart and the dagger are also featured in Bilge Alkor’s works since the jeweler stabs his victims in the heart with a dagger. The red area symbolizes blood, which, signifying both life and death, is sacred (Beauvoir, 2021:187). The face of the figure holding the dagger is dark and unclear. Hence, Alkor is also referencing the time when the murders are being committed one after the other and the perpetrator cannot be found.
CONCLUSION
Hoffmann's tales highlight the difference between reality and fantasy. Dreams or fantasies are colorful and sparkling. They intersect as they complete each other. It is unclear where one ends and the other begins, and the uncertainty is beautiful. The primary principle is to lead the reader into doubt. A tense uncertainty surrounds the reader.
Hoffmann's tales have been adapted to music by Offenbach. Hoffmann himself is a composer, a music critic, a writer, a sketch artist, and a caricaturist.
One would not be remiss to say that the stories discussed around concepts like the Gothic, the uncanny, automatons, and alchemy actually have a single reason for being.
The reason for being of the stories is to disrupt the tedium, monotony, or insipidness of life. As Hoffmann accomplishes this through his compositions, drawings, and stories, he renders visible the threshold between reality and fantasy, underscoring the humorous aspect of the supernatural. Fantasies, contrary to the real world, are relatively far warmer and more colorful, joyful, and reliable. The tedium of everyday life is conveyed through characters in academic circles. Professor Spalanzi in "The Sandman" and the university vice president in "The Golden Pot" serve this purpose. Sound in the stories morphs into color in the language of images. For instance, the sound of crystals in "The Golden Pot" is communicated through the color spectrum in Bilge Alkor’s visual work. Sound turns into color and is concretized.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alkor, B. (2022) Hoffmann’ın Masalları [Tales of Hoffman], Bilge Alkor Sanat Koleksiyonu Yayınları, Istanbul.
Beauvoir, S. (2021) İkinci Cinsiyet – Olgular Efsaneler [The Second Sex], Çev: Gülnur Acar Savran, KÜY, Istanbul.
Freud, S. (1999) Sanat ve Edebiyat [Art and Literature], “Tekinsiz” [The Uncanny], Çev: Emre Kapkın, Ayşen Tekşen Kapkın, Payel Yayınevi, Istanbul.
Gombrich, E. H. (2004) Sanatın Öyküsü [The Story of Art], Çev: Bedrettin Cömert, Remzi Kitabevi, Istanbul.
Hoffmann, E. (2021) Kum Adam – Seçme Masallar [The Sandman – Selected Tales], Çev: İris Kantemir, İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, Istanbul.
Hoffmann, E. (2004) Matmazel Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudéri], Çev: Esat Nermi Erendor, Say Yayınları, Istanbul.
Öndin, N. (2017) Rönesans ve Simya [Renaissance and Alchemy], Hayalperest Yayınları, Istanbul.
İshak Reyna: Dear Bilge Alkor, we are conducting this interview with you on the occasion of your dual exhibition, which just opened at Ekavart, and their catalogues, Tales of Hoffmann and Tango de la Rose. It's an interesting coincidence that 2022, when the exhibition and catalogues meet their audience, is the 200th anniversary of the death of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), the grand master of the German Romantics, the fantastical, and the uncanny, the last of which Freud also points out—in his article "On the Uncanny", which you also reference in the beginning of the catalogue. So far as I've been able to observe, since your dual Shakespeare exhibition in 1996, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the dialogue you establish "From One Art Form to Another" with the works of master artists of music and literature, such as Shakespeare, Mozart, and Schubert, just as you do here with Hoffmann, has been one of the fundamental elements of your artistic production. So I would like to ask, why Hoffmann this time, and why now? For example, did the thoroughly uncanny Covid-19 pandemic process undergone by humankind and our country play a role in this selection?
Bilge Alkor: Every artist is something of a "gatherer". Besides art books, artworks, memories, photographs, and information, I have also gathered, or collected, curios, stones, toys, and masks. Everything with a story, basically.
During the pandemic, I was shut up in my collectioner's house with everything I'd gathered and the problems brought on by age. The stories of all the objects I had collected were uncanny. And that's what opened up to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s provocative world and grew. Since I couldn't go to my studio, I had to develop a new technique to be able to work from my desk. I further developed the digital technique that I used in my project "Mirror of Angels and Devils" in 2010 and that I dubbed "photo-painting".
İ.R.: Could you elaborate on the process and the memories that brought you to Hoffmann? For example, your husband, the poet Can Alkor, who introduced me to Hoffmann's writings and who is the translator of the verses in the two Shakespeare exhibitions we mentioned above—in our conversations, he has told me that he encountered Hoffmann (and another great German Romantic, Kleist) in the years between childhood and early adolescence in the community center library through "The Doge and the Dogaressa", whose translation by Sabahattin Ali was featured in Three Romantic Stories published as part of the National Education Classics in 1943, and whose new edition was fortunately taken up by Yapı Kredi Publishing. What about you?
B.A.: In the years Can and I lived in Rome, we included E. T. A. Hoffmann’s "Princess Brambilla" in our joint evening reading hour. Perhaps we thought that a story set in Rome would bring us closer to the city. After those years, what Klee said about his trip to Tunisia, that "color possessed him", was true in this case too. Hoffmann's world took me in.
Bilge Alkor gathers her recent work around the theme of a “mirror.” She holds a mirror up to angels, devils, and therefore, in an indirect manner, to the “human being.” The works have been created using a variety of techniques… from oil painting to photography, photo-painting to collage, and pebbles. Before going on to the actual work, I would like to enter into Alkor’s world of art by way of one of her engravings. During the years she spent in Italy, for a short period of time, Alkor worked using this technique. However, she did not return to this technique in her later work. Still, the reason I would like to begin with this particular work is my belief that it can perhaps provide access to Alkor’s art in general.
The first thing we see upon looking at the work is a rapid movement from left to right, a flow of lines across the rectangular surface. Series of marks, both large and small, randomly placed along the lines. It is lighter where the marks are sparse; in some places they are denser to form a dark field. The darkest area is the black cloud in the upper left corner. Descending lines, giving the impression of rain across the surface.
The dark field conceals a number of forms that can be interpreted in a variety of ways: strange, nondescript figures, animal-like forms… The lines flow in a single direction, but form a complex composition. Closer inspection reveals lines nestling within each other; curving and overlapping, and taking sudden turns from their straight course. Is this the sea? Waves, perhaps? Is it the wind that changes its direction every now and then? What I clearly see (or believe I see) in the dark cloud is an angel’s wing, a dark face… but the most interesting figure I see is a raised hand, as if to say “stop!” The piece is called molto agitato. Agitato is a musical term meaning agitated and dynamic, and is used to determine the mood of a musical composition. The third and final movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata (Op. 27, No. 2) is an example: presto agitato. This movement is extremely fast and turbulent, and contains pauses and moments of calm. Following this, my impression of the work is as follows: there are no figures resembling the human being, we only see a part of the world inhabited by this being. We see the temporal experience of the human being, passing by within the rapid flow of life, and oscillating between dualisms.
The artist’s use of a musical term indicates that she has ventured beyond the visual field. As a matter of fact, looking back on her career, we see that she has produced work inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute, Schubert’s Winter Journey song cycle and Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. This is no random selection. The common point of these works, all different both in form and content, attracted the artist’s attention: the intermingling of truths and myths that encompass human existence. I don’t think it is necessary for me to say that Alkor’s paintings are no mere illustrations for literary texts. The artist reinterprets and visualizes the characters in works that have left an impact on her and led her to contemplation.
The focal point of “The Mirror of Angels and Devils” is also the human being; as it seeks concealment within myths and tries to make sense of the realities of its surroundings. The first paintings in the series are a variation on Dürer’s engraving titled Melencolia I. This work by Dürer is one of three engravings that are thought to form a series. The other two are Saint Jerome in His Study and Knight, Death and Devil. The most popular interpretation suggests that Dürer expresses the three attitudes towards life in these engravings: As opposed to the contemplative Melencolia I represents the active, intuitive stance; this is a stance full of progressive visions. Each work overflows with symbols in the context of its topic. The meaning of Melencolia I has never been fully deciphered and has been subject to many debates. In the engraving, a winged female figure sits, resting all her weight on the step; her hand leans on her temple while she holds a compass in her other hand. In her lap is a closed book. She gazes vacantly into space. A dog, curled up, dozes at her feet. Some have perceived the work to be a puzzle because of the small angel beside her and the various tools surrounding her. I will not attempt to explain or interpret the work since Alkor does not take up any of the symbols in the engraving. The debate that began with the question, “Why is the woman an angel?” has continued to the present day with each symbol being closely scrutinized, and new interpretations have constantly been put forth. The fact that melancholia was perceived to be an illness meant that the work attracted the attention of medical doctors too, and the engraving became subject to scientific essays, and it also a source of inspiration for many artists and writers.
One may ask why Bilge Alkor began her angel paintings by interpreting this engraving. I believe that this is the key to the central idea behind all her paintings.
Angels
Alkor does not use Dürer’s symbols. The melancholic woman is, as in Dürer’s work, an angel. Only the first of the paintings approaches Dürer’s in terms of content. The angel is in isolated space, entirely alone, lost in thought. Her head rests in her left hand; she holds an apple in the palm of her right hand. She has giant wings that cover almost the entire surface of the painting. The only symbol other than the wings is the apple. What could the apple symbolize? Nature? Life? Original sin? The mystery, or absurdity of life? Or perhaps all of these.
There are four Angels of San Marco. They are the angels that wander amongst the crowd in St. Mark’s Square during the Carnival of Venice.
Then come the angels who serve as messengers from God: Gabriel and Azrael. The angels that enable communication between God and human beings, the other world and this one. Symbols of the two main dualities in life: birth (good news) and death (bad news). According to the beliefs of monotheist religions, Gabriel is the messenger between God and his prophets. He is the Angel who delivers the good news. In Islam, Gabriel is the medium through which the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. Gabriel accompanies Muhammad during Mi’raj, his ascent to heaven. In Christianity, Mary learns from Gabriel that she will bear Jesus. As for Azrael, he is the harbinger of death. In the other paintings, we see the angel as a clown. Why is the angel a clown? The clown is a figure in theatre that makes the audience laugh/cry. Since the first emergence of the figure, the clown has not only performed in theatre, it has been a centre of great attention and has featured in almost all branches of art, from literature to music. Alkor’s treatment of the angel reminded me of a story of a clown, written by Henry Miller. I must immediately emphasize that this short story, illustrated by Joan Miro, is unlike any other of Miller’s short stories. It is the thought-provoking, melancholic story of man’s deep and critical settling of accounts with himself: The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. In this poetic narrative, a very successful and popular clown suffers the frustration of not having achieved his goal. His goal is not to make people laugh or cry temporarily. He wants to teach of laughter. This is what he strives to do. The more he tries to make people laugh, the more they do exactly that. The more they laugh; the more the clown enters into a trance. No one realizes this at first. Eventually, they lose interest. He gets booed, attacked, wounded and bruised; he barely manages to save his life. The story ends with painful experiences, intense reckonings and death. In the final moment of his life the clown becomes aware of his tragic condition: He was not satisfied with making people laugh, and went beyond his own limits. He tried to teach people that another world, and happiness beyond laughter and sorrow was possible. Is this not, in a sense, measuring up to God? In the same way, Bilge Alkor’s angels are also failures and unhappy… In the series titled The Story of the Angel we see the bitter end of an angel, and how the angel destroys herself in despair…
The Devil
Considering she began the series of angels with Dürer’s Melencolia I, one may have thought that Alkor would have interpreted the devil in Dürer’s engraving in the series of devils. It is true that the main figure in Knight, Death and the Devil is the knight; but the devil in the engraving is a ghastly, grotesque figure, the combination of a donkey, a hog, a stag, a bird etc. But a devil-figure in this style could not have been the artist’s point of departure. Her view of the devil is quite different from her view of the angel. Alkor’s angel was melancholic, it was a failure, and unhappy. Yet the devil perfectly fits the term “devilish.” The term has both positive and negative connotations. Alkor’s devils constantly change their disguise. They cut, they fit, they deceive, they are masters of all manners of trickery; but they also provoke creativity in human beings. They refuse to become slaves; they set an example in daring to say “no.” Transforming such qualities into virtues is a matter of personality. From this viewpoint, one could claim that the devil is of benefit to humans. The artist has written the word “Lucifer” on three large oil-paintings. Lucifer is one of the names given to the devil in Christianity. Of Latin origin, the word means light-bearer. The devil has many names, but they do not have auspicious meanings. Lucifer is the only name of the devil that may be considered auspicious, since it indicates light and illumination.
There are three paintings in the “Lucifer” series. The artist has used familiar symbols in these: wings, horns, the snake etc. The trickery and deceitfulness of the devil is perceived in the photographs of the collages Alkor has produced with pebbles. Just like the angel, the devil has its own story,. These works are also photo-paintings. I mentioned above that the artist’s view of the devil is more positive than her view of the angel. However, the end of the devil’s story is sad too. “The devil narrates,” begins the series. “Once upon a time.” And the story begins. The devil creates a creature similar to himself. This creature is a woman. Is this because he does not want to be alone? Or does he want the devils to reproduce so that they can stand up to the angels? Perhaps. Since the woman then becomes a pomegranate. The pomegranate is the symbol of fertility. In the final frame, the new creature is buried in the dark night, half-illuminated by streetlights.
Colours and Symbols
Colour is used for its symbolic value in Alkor’s paintings. The angels are generally blue, and the devils are red. Looking at each painting individually, tones, tonal transitions, and other fields of colour added to the main colour assume symbolic functions and produce differences. For example, the joyful, vivid colours of Gabriel indicate at first sight that he is the bearer of good news, whereas the melancholic dark colours of Azrael reveal that he bears bad news. Looking at the Melencolia paintings, the first painting and the colours of the angel of death transmit the same type of sadness. A despondent view of life and the end of life… In the first series, the darkening tones of blue and dark red and the scattered black marks symbolize the melancholic posture of the angels. The angels are always pensive, introvert, melancholic. However, there are moments when they manage to shake off their melancholy. We see this to a certain extent in the Angels of San Marco. The colours are brighter. A bright green is added to the blue. The white spots on the wings lend a unique air to these angels. Especially to Gabriel, the bearer of good news… Alas, the angel will not meet a good end. Let us look more closely at the first painting. The figure of the angel fills up the surface of the canvas. We understand that the figure is in isolated space from the grey-blue field of colour in the upper right corner of the painting. This is also the method used to reveal space in the other paintings of the series. This is not a bright sky. It is overcast, just like the inner world of the angel. At the lower part of the painting there are flower-like forms, difficult to decipher, that sit within red, blue and black daubs of colour. The most distinctive form is a cube. In the foreground of the cube, amongst intricate lines, there is a figure resembling a bird. Looking at it in the context of the paintings in this exhibition, I interpret it as a crow. The reason for this is that the crow is used as a symbol of the impending end in “The Story of the Angel” as well. In the “Winter Journey” paintings mentioned above, the crow symbolized death. Therefore, in the artist’s visual dictionary, the crow is the symbol of impending death, or the coming of the end.
I would like to open a bracket here to draw attention to the style of drawing used for the crow figure we took from the “Winter Journey.” The wings of the crow, that stretch open to both sides to cover the entire surface of the painting are emphasized with straight, round, waved, thin and thick lines. They overlap to form rectangles and narrow angled triangles of various sizes. The artist visualized the “Winter Journey” paintings where poetry and music combine by interpreting Schubert’s song cycle. The depth and movement on the painting’s surface corresponds to the progress of the overlapping lines of musical notation. This correspondence (the rapid flow of lines and the formation of various layers by the overlapping of surfaces) reflects the bird’s flight in space. The engraving we focused on at the start of the essay shows that even at the beginning of her career, the artist contemplated and sought a response for the problem of visualizing thought. She seeks solutions according to the topic and the possibilities her choice of material offers. In the angel and devil paintings she produces the depth/movement on the surface of the painting by the overlapping of daubs of colour, thin/thick lines, marks and similar forms, and also by light effects.
Narrative and Staging
Alkor’s paintings are based on narrative. Therefore, she designs her compositions as stagings, in the exact same manner as a theatre play. This is valid for all her paintings, but is more emphasized in her photographic work. Real life and fictional life are treated as intertwined, and this is where the story emerges. In other words, she combines the fictional story she creates with real life. Those who assume roles in the stories of devils and angels are people from real life. In the story of the devil, in the upper row, a Venetian landscape has been inserted amongst the frames that show the devil. A canal… A bridge… Waves glistening in the sun… People looking down from the bridge… In the second row, this time it is not the devil, but his creation, the woman, that stands in front of the same bridge. The figures standing at the foot of the bridge are wearing conical hats. This tells us that the story takes place during the carnival. The Carnival of Venice is based on an ancient tradition. It is an annual festival where masks are a main feature, and it has a history going back centuries. For this series of works, the artist travelled to Venice during carnival and took photographs. (Let us recall here the Angels of San Marco). The story of the angel quite probably takes place in Venice, too. The angel is a beautiful woman. First she is in a room, in front of a fireplace; then in an old building with light shining through its windows; and later she destroys her wings and they turn into light and fly away. Later on, she is under the trees amongst greenery, in a cemetery. The tombstone is the statue of an angel. The postures of the devil and the angel, their movement, the expression of the actors or the masks – according to the flow of the narrative – are all exceedingly theatrical. It is evident that their soul-searching has brought them suffering. In the story of the angel, in the frame next to the tombstone there is a crow, the harbinger of the end. In the final frame, the angel is in semi-darkness, in front of the fireplace we see in the first frame. She sits with her head bowed, she covers her face with her arms. At the end of the story, the devil is also in the dark. His face is covered in black, it appears to be lifeless, but still he stands. Has the angel given up, is the devil resisting? The questions remain open-ended… this very brief account I have provided of the stories of the angel and the devil leave a lot of open ground.
The Witnesses series is even more thought provoking. Portraits of devils and angels. Collages made of pebbles. Who and what do they stand witness to? As I mentioned above, the angel is disguised as a clown. But he does not laugh; he has tears in his eyes… Whereas the devil constantly swaps disguises, becoming a clown too… He laughs; and the expression on his face suggests mischief. He seems self-satisfied.
Looking at the works in the exhibition as a whole, we get the feeling that we are watching a theatre play from start to end. Since the events take place in Venice, the play could have been called “Carnival in Venice.” The actors are people dressed up as angels and devils. The clown is the main character. He plays both the angel and the devil. The clown makes us both laugh and cry. In our story, he plays two separate characters. One is the angel, and the other is the devil… They hold a mirror up to humanity. The angel tries to help people, like in Henry Miller’s short story. He tries to compete with God. He fails. The devil stands up to God. Can he serve any purpose by standing up to God? Perhaps, if he is thought of as the “bearer of light.” It depends whether the one who looks in the mirror can make use of the light.
Alkor’s paintings are highly thought provoking. At the beginning of the essay, I focused on an engraving she produced in her early years in order to unravel her artistic intention. My aim was to show that she had sensed, even in the days of her youth, that it was necessary to adopt an attitude, a stance towards the vagaries of life. In recent years she has begun to think about her experiences. This has led her to a settling of accounts with life, or rather, with the realities of life and her inner world. The search for a way to remain standing within the flow of life as it swiftly changes… “The Mirror of Angels and Devils” is the artist’s most recent work. It is based on the artist’s worldview, the attitude towards life. There is a lot of open ground for the viewer. Questions multiply during the process of perception; reflections in the mirror diversify. If the paintings are viewed as a whole, and within their context, viewers shall find new dimensions of perception during the viewing process, and shall perhaps see themselves in the mirrors.
Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera is one of his two final works. The opera was completed in 1791, and staged in Vienna the same year. Compared to Mozart’s other operas, The Magic Flute is multilayered, contains different dimensions of perception and is thus very much open to interpretation. The interest in this opera has not waned at all since 1791, the year in which it was first staged, to the present day, its subject matter has been treated with a new viewpoint in every period; and the opera has been staged with different interpretations in which one or more of its layers have been given prominence. Especially in recent years, we have read about/witnessed its main characters not only wear contemporary clothes but be equipped with accessories such as sunglasses, backpacks etc. and even enter stage on bicycles or toy cars. It has become an indispensable condition of staging for directors to form a link between older works and the present day. Even changes in subject matter are now taken naturally, as long as they are executed in a convincing manner.
I believe that Bilge Alkor’s “The Magic Flute’”paintings put forth a brand new interpretation of this opera. We know Bilge Alkor from her interdisciplinary works. First the characters of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest; then the lieds of Schubert’s Winterreise and now The Magic Flute are products of her interdisciplinary works. In other words, first theatre, then poetry and music, and ultimately, opera, which we could describe as the most comprehensive branch of art… We know that in these works, Alkor delves deep without distorting the integrity of the subject matter, and seeks the essence. So, does her approach in “The Magic Flute” paintings also follow the same lines? Is her interpretation aimed at conveying a certain purpose? In other words, does she seek to draw attention to a contemporary issue? Or is it about a dimension of perception added to the paintings by the viewer (in this instance, by me)? In this article, I will first try to focus on the paintings in the context of subject matter, and then leave the response to this question to the reader.
Love, Power, Wisdom
Let us first take a quick look at the subject matter. At the first stage of perception the subject matter creates a fairy tale impression in the full sense of the word. Reality has been kneaded with fairy-tales, and historical, mythological and Masonic elements. The events take place in Ancient Egypt, in an environment dominated by the cult of Isis and Osiris. Pamina, the daughter of the Night Queen, is kidnapped by the men of Sarastro, the Sun King. Tamino, a young and handsome prince, loses his way in the forest, and faints as he escapes from the dragon on his trail. The maids of the queen hear his cries of help, kill the dragon to save him, and inform the queen. The queen shows Tamino a picture of her daughter, and asks him to save her. Tamino falls in love with Pamina the moment he looks at the picture, and promises the Queen he will rescue her daughter from the evil Sarastro. The Queen gives him a magic flute. She presents him with Papageno, the Bird Man, as a companion. The Three Wise Boys who descend from amidst the clouds in the sky will guide them in moments of stress so they can succeed in their quest. However, once Tamino arrives at Sarastro’s palace and speaks to his priests, he understands that Sarastro is not an evil man. Sarastro’s aim is to test Tamino, wed him with Pamina and have him succeed to the throne. One of the priests is not sure whether Tamino can pass the test, and asks Sarastro, “Do you think he will pass the test? He is a prince.” Sarastro answers: “Beyond that, he is a human being.” Unaware of all this, Tamino passes various tests to meet Pamina. Meanwhile, the Night Queen, driven mad with her desire for revenge, orders her daughter to kill Sarastro. However, Pamina won’t fulfil her order. She knows that Sarastro is not an evil person. Her love for Tamino is great. Tamino passes all the tests and unites with his lover. Yet they will face the greatest test with Pamina: to pass through earth, water and fire. Thanks to the power of the magical flute, the two lovers succeed in this challenge as well.
The pattern of the subject matter I have related in rough outlines, acquires further colour and deep meanings with events such as Monostatos, one of Sarastro’s men, falling in love with and harassing Pamina, Papageno’s search for a girlfriend, the wise boys rescuing Pamina and Papageno right when they are about to commit suicide in despair. From this viewpoint, the opera is both entertaining and educational. This is why the public’s interest in the Magic Flute has never waned. Fairy-tale-like elements such as wild animals that suddenly fall silent and seek cover with the sound of the magic flute, entertaining folk songs that stick in the mind at first hearing, Papagena, who first appears before Papageno as an old lady, suddenly becoming young, etc., led to the opera being treated for many years as a musical fairy-tale, or a children’s opera. However, the deep dimensions that emerge during the process of reception led to this opera becoming subject to many researches and being staged with a great variety of interpretations. What are they? The three main concepts clearly seen in the first stage of perception are, love, power and wisdom. These are weaved with contradictions from life to form the subject matter: the clash of the forces of light and dark; good – evil; love, passion – hatred, revenge; the positive-negative aspects of roles ascribed to women and men by society; intellect and nature; the stance against life of two different sections of society – Tamino-Pamina, Papageno-Papagena –; enlightenmentism, freemasonry – fascism, racism etc.
Are these all part of the essence of the subject matter? Or are they perceptual dimensions discovered over time? What did Mozart and the librettist of the opera, Emanuel Schikaneder want to express? It is known that Mozart was a freemason. On the basis of the Masonic elements and symbols in the opera (the repetition of the number three in the text and music, three doors, three ladies, three child-spirits etc.), that Sarastro symbolized freemasonry and the Night Queen the dark forces, was a theses proposed in the earliest commentaries. There was strong opposition against enlightenmentism that had spread across Europe following the French revolution, and all enlightenmentist ideas in conservative and intensely Catholic Austria. Masonic lodges were placed under surveillance and members were stigmatized. It is possible that Mozart and Schikaneder created a fairy-tale like atmosphere for the opera in foresight of such danger. However, this is only a single aspect of the work, and does not provide a sufficient answer for certain parts it contains which remain open to interpretation.
This is perhaps the reason why The Magic Flute –after Don Giovanni– has become the opera that has attracted the interest of painters most. Especially 20th century painters have shown great interest in this opera. Oskar Kokoschka, Marc Chagall, David Hockney, William Kentridge and Karel Appel are among painters who have produced stage designs for The Magic Flute. One could add to these names, however, these artists worked in tandem with the director on the dramaturgy to create their designs for the stage. Yet there are also painters who, independent of a staging, produced paintings only of characters or scenes of the opera.
Let us now turn to our artist’s paintings. Alkor has faithfully depicted the opera, as if she were producing a stage design. Some of the paintings are abstract, while others are figurative. She has used a variety of techniques: oil-acrylic, photo-painting and photography. For each person she has imagined a mask befitting of their character. However, the main characters have not been included in this process: The Night Queen and Sarastro, Tamino and Pamina. They have both masks and full-size paintings. The paintings of the Night Queen and Sarastro are abstract. In the text, the Night Queen is referred to as the “sparkling Queen.” In the painting, large and small stars, sparkling amidst various tones of a nocturnal blue, delineate the outlines of the Queen figure, and surround her completely. Sarastro appears before us in warm sun colours from yellow to red. Tamino is a slender, elegant young lady. Barefoot, wearing a black dress, and a mask with a heading on her head, which covers more than half of her face, her head slightly tilted forward, she plays a flute she is holding. Pamina is a baby with eyes swollen from crying. The painting Tamino falls in love with at first gaze is, just like the text describes, placed within a frame embroidered with glimmering colourful gems. In another painting, Pamina has placed her hands on her knees, her head is tilted sideways, and she sits, exhausted, desperate, and unhappy. Papageno, with his huge colourful wings, is a bird to perfection. In Papagena’s paintings, when we look up from the lower part of the painting, we can follow how she changed into a happy, beautiful woman. The artist creates this effect with faces that emerge from the black area in the lower part of the painting, which are only half-visible at first and then gradually completed as they come into the light.
Tamino and Pamina
Both characters are in a manner we have previously unseen in other The Magic Flute interpretations. In the opera, Tamino is an inexperienced, handsome prince. Yet in our painting, he is a young woman. How should we interpret this? Pierre Audi, the director who has staged The Magic Flute a few times at different times in different theatres, describes Tamino as a colourless, naïve type. An unsuspecting, indecisive, naïve child who falls in love with a painting at first sight, and believes the Queen’s words without giving them any consideration. According to traditional discourse, a man has no fear. Could Bilge Alkor have interpreted Tamino like this? This is the first interpretation that comes to mind. Yet in the opera we see that Tamino undergoes a great change. There is a great change in his life after he sees Pamina’s painting. For the first time, he understands what love is and experiences it intensely; he takes all kinds of risks for his love for Pamina. He passes through various tests, and he learns to keep silent, patient, and to persevere. Once an inexperienced child, he becomes a mature adult. These virtues are unique to “humans.” Let us remember how Sarastro said “He is human” about Tamino. So virtue, strength, and the path that leads to wisdom through love, are one and the same for man and woman. Thus Pamina traverses this path with Tamino, and passes the test. As the first woman admitted into Sarastro’s temple, she is declared Queen by Sarastro. King and Queen, Tamino and Pamina, they are both women. What could be the idea behind this odd situation? Let us repeat the main concepts the subject matter is based on, we have already mentioned “power, love and wisdom,” we can now add “change and virtue” to these. Are these qualities unique to men? Of course not. They are found in both sexes. Thus, seeing and presenting Tamino as a women expresses a stance against gender discrimination, and that being “human” is not a quality unique to men.
As for Pamina… In the painting the Night Queen gives to Tamino, Pamina is unhappy. She is crying. Why? Her love for her mother was boundless until she gave him the dagger to kill Sarastro. She believed her. She wanted to escape from Sarastro’s temple, and go back to her mother. When Monostatos caught her escaping with Papageno and turned her in, she told Sarastro that she escaped because Monostatos had harassed her, and pleads with him to forgive and release her. Sarastro replied, “You love someone else very much. You and your happiness would be killed if I left you in your mother’s hands.” Events move on, and the Night Queen, blinded by revenge, curses her daughter. Pamina no longer believes her mother, but Sarastro. It becomes more difficult to explain why Pamina appears unhappy in her painting in the context of this plot. In the painting, Pamina, in contrast to Tamino, is not a living being made of flesh and blood, but a doll. Pamina, just coming out of childhood, also undergoes a “change” like Tamino. The deep “love” they feel for each other takes them to maturity and happiness. Does this image of the doll express the fact that Pamina, when by the side of her mother, was a characterless, dull girl who could not even realize that she was unhappy? Perhaps. The doll comes to life with the deep love she feels for Tamino. The masks of Tamino and Pamina seem to affirm this perception, because despite formal differences, they are very similar in terms of content. In other words, the content emphasizes the closeness of the two young people to one another in essence. The colours are the same. Pamina’s mask features a crown made of dry leaves above the eyeholes, and a small red heart beneath her eyes, where the mouth would be. It is a very thin mask; it is placed on a light-coloured background adorned with elegant branches. The crown on her head is made of dry leaves. On the surface of the painting, visible on both sides of the mask, there are flowers…
These are the main characters of the opera, and they are connected more to the text rather than the music. The paintings form a whole with quotes from the libretto. In my opinion, there are two large oil paintings that delve into the essence of the text and directly reflect the music: The first is the painting of the magic flute. The second is An Offering to the Magic Flute’s Music. These two paintings complete each other. It seems as if the essence of the subject matter has been concealed in these paintings. The magic flute, which is the focal point of the opera and lends its name to it, has been carved from a thousand-year old tree by Pamina’s father, to provide protection for her. It will now protect the young couple that are attached to each other with a deep ‘love’ in the tough test they face. In the painting, the flute lies horizontally in the exact centre of the painting. Sound waves in various colours emanate from the flute to cover the entire surface of the painting. The second painting is formed according to the web of symbols featured in the opera, in precisely the same manner an opera overture is formed as a mesh of the themes of the opera; the colours of the Night Queen and Sarastro feature alongside each other. There are glittering stars in the exact centre of the painting, scattering in all directions in a rapid cyclical movement in the dark blue space, emphasizing the same cyclical movement… The symbols of the Night Queen. Triangles pointing to the sky… The symbols of Sarastro. Contrasting colours dominate the painting, in other words, opposing forces feature together. Symbols intermesh. When Pamina tells Sarastro she wants to go back to her mother, he replies, “I hold sway over her,” regarding the Night Queen. Then he adds that women will stray from the right path if they are not given orders by men. Pamina’s father (The Sun King) gave the sevenfold sun disk to Sarastro as he lay dying, and entrusted his wife and daughter to him. This meant that the order of night and day was disrupted. The Night Queen wants to take all power into her own hands by capturing the sun disk. However, we learn right from the start, from Pamina and Papageno’s duet that it is the bond of “love,” which elevates woman and man together to divinity. Woman with her heart, and man with his intelligence complete each other. Sarastro has kidnapped Pamina on a premonition; Tamino and Pamina will pass the test, Sarastro will give the sun disk back to them, and the old order of night and day will be re-established. This painting could be perceived, in line with the essence of the subject matter, as the previous order where universal peace holds sway. However, if we imagine Tamino as a woman, all dichotomies will disappear. Since women have intelligence and heart, the union of opposite sexes “that complete each other” would no longer be necessary. The opera ends with light holding sway over dark forces, and the Sun King over the Night Queen. In this new interpretation, the finale of the opera has been changed. Two women, committed to each other, having overcome the toughest tests together, will realize universal peace. There is no end to dreaming, who knows, perhaps then we would have a brighter, happier world where the lust for power and revenge was unknown.
To tell the truth, it is striking that in our age when women are rising against the patriarchal social order that has been in place for centuries, such an interpretation has, for the first time, come from a Turkish artist. If The Magic Flute were to be staged by a creative director with Bilge Alkor’s stage design, such a product would undoubtedly be “a first.” A very significant interpretation in our age when masculine gender continues to be questioned, and women continue to rebel against the system.
A relationship based on their “non-verbal” nature has now and again been proposed between the melodic structure formed by the rise and fall of musical tones in music, and the “abstract” order formed by tones of colour to unify the composition. As music, the most abstract among the arts, interprets nature and human spirit via sound, and accompanied by melodic structure, it converges with what the painter strives to achieve without emulating nature, and accompanied by purely abstract forms. However, although this convergence can be pre-programmed, it can also develop around indirect connections; the painter might turn to the canvas under the influence of a certain musical piece, a musician might also create a composition inspired by a work of a painter.
Matching the Aural and the Visual
Yet if an overview of well-known examples reveals that an orientation from painting to music predominates in the relationship between these two arts, a significant reason for this is the more widespread nature in terms of artistic process of the practice of transforming aural forms in music particularly into abstract forms in painting. Abstract painters like Mondrian, Klee and Mathieu went beyond former examples in which the connection with music was restricted to transferring a scene from a concert onto the canvas to seek “direct” transitions between sound and the plastic structure of colour and form, and thus, in a sense, chose to match the “aural” and the “visual.” In this sense, it was more the abstract painters who led the path in furthering this association, and seeking a deeper relationship.
Bilge Alkor, too, who in her previous work revealed the versatile meaning of painterly form, with her new works in acrylic and mixed media on paper and canvas, departs from the stimulating function of music to provide proof that she is a member of this generation of artists. In this exhibition, she finds inspiration in Schubert’s lieds based on Müller’s Winterreise texts. Although at first glance the work appears equidistant to both, it is evident that Schubert’s compositions serve as a potent source from her application of a method that can express the inner senses particularly in those paintings featuring tones of black with the sporadic use of speckles.
An Evocative Richness
When the totality of landscapes, open to observation and impression throughout the journey, and settling in visual memory within the flow of time meets with music, it is enhanced with evocative richness; this is the stage where the spell of music comes into play. As Can Alkor also points out in his catalogue text, the fact that the lied, as a musical form, is itself “a product of an exchange” between poetry and music inevitably highlights the sensorial aspect that at first gaze reveals its predominant nature in Alkor’s paintings, and plays an effective role in emphasizing the transition process from text to music, which is consolidated by the notes added below the paintings.
The black speckle is in fact an element which invites the viewer to contemplate how dreams imagined in the company of music can only be transformed into the real world via a metaphor of travel, and perhaps, despite the entire poetic nature of the subject matter, create the impression of some kind of nightmare, leading on to suspicion and anxiety. This dilemma not only reinforces the fact that the patterns in Bilge Alkor’s paintings are signs of life, but also embraces the viewer with the latent meanings concealed behind these heavy black speckles that melt and spread out across the surfaces of the paintings and gradually assume a “symbolic” quality.
Poetry and Sound
Alkor’s paintings in her new exhibition may be perceived as visual notes to a travelogue interpreted along with Schubert’s music. Thus, we encounter a phenomenon that assumes new dimensions at every new stage, extending from poetry to music, and from there to painting, and weaved by different artists at every step. The selection of a method in accordance with this multidimensional structure in places where various elements such as intervention by hand, drawing and collage have been used, situates Bilge Alkor’s compositions at a further focal point of meaning: The previously established dialogue between poetry and sound is a plural form of “expression” that necessitates the referencing of two distinct arts. Thus, this particular expression once again brings forth the rule that the phenomenon of reality it departs from cannot be interpreted from an absolute viewpoint.
My close involvement with Bilge Alkor’s works began in 2007, with a visit I made to her studio for the upcoming “Modern and Beyond” exhibition held at santralistanbul, and I was highly impressed by the rich intellectual aspect of her work.
Bilge is an international artist who has opened exhibitions in many European cities including İstanbul during her long professional artistic career. She is a thinker who works in painting, music and photography in tandem, who is capable of seeing their interconnections, and believes that they nourish each other. From the audience’s viewpoint, her work goes beyond mere visuality, and provokes thought.
To assess Bilge Alkor’s work only as paintings is bound to fall short. Music, literature, photography and cinema, in their wide scope, have become part of her thought. Hers is the interpretation of a multilayered world dominated by all forms of art. Closer perhaps to philosophy. This assessment, of course, depends on the viewpoint, and the viewer’s background.
Bilge Alkor studied at academies in Istanbul, Rome and Munich, observed examples of world art in museums, read texts on art, and developed an interest in philosophy, and upon this comprehensive background, discovered her own unique form of expression. Therefore, her work deserves to be understood as an oeuvre where, in addition to a multidirectional, rich formality, an intellectual approach takes precedence.
When assessed in view of such qualities, Alkor’s works reveal their rich substance that cannot be restricted to locality. In terms of the history of painting in Turkey, her work can be located within the subjective figuration of the post-1980s generation, and the abstract work of the same period. However, her work can more be seen to treat inner experience with an expressionist style.
Modernist artists in Turkey, who were trained in accordance with the formalist approach of the “d Group” and adopted late-cubist views as theory, perceived abstract art as a free approach to composition, colour and rhythm, and formal experimentation. Subject matter is selected from the environment or everyday life, or may be related to Anatolian Civilisations. The emphasis is on the use of the tools of the art of painting. Less importance is given to the relationship between composition and the meaning of the work, which appears to be superficial.
In contrast to this, Alkor’s work stands outside the conventional trajectory of the art of painting in Turkey, which associates modernism with formalism; and corresponds to the post-1980s period when individual differences began to emerge. The post-1990s are a time when artist in Turkey showed greater interest in the international art scene, and sought their means of expression in a wider framework. With her multidirectional, multilayered approach, which sought relations between the arts, Bilge Alkor was among the pioneering artists of this period. Bilge’s approach to art should certainly be addressed within the framework of universal values. Another aspect that should not be overlooked is her proximity to the European cultural environment. Bilge’s source of inspiration is the intellectual tradition of the European art scene.
The artist’s experimental period in Munich impelled her towards a sentimental exploration and different subject matter rarely seen in abstract art in Turkey. This subject matter, related from the very beginning to literature and music, are grounded in a rich intellectual perspective. In Alkor’s work, it is meaning that stimulates the artist, and takes precedence over other elements. Her subject matter readily testifies to this. The message bears importance, and this is not merely a technical matter. Alkor, too, most certainly, endeavours to use the unique tools of the art of painting. However, unlike formal abstractions based on nature, it is “abstractions she attains departing from meaning” that form the foundation of her work.
An overview of Bilge’s oeuvre, beginning with her early work, reveals the strong connection between the titles she gives her works and their content, and how they provide clues to the viewer about what, and how the artist ascribes meaning to, and provokes thought by unfolding relations and options. The main theme of each work has seemingly been determined in advance. This approach is valid for almost all her works, thus “mental pre-composition takes precedence over formal pre-composition.”
For instance, in her works titled Alter Ego, and her eponymous work inspired by E.T.A Hoffmann’s novella published in 1820 titled Princess Brambilla, Bilge Alkor’s subject matter is a second personality, a companion soul one creates to overcome loneliness, narrated within a fantastical setting, an uncanny world. Figures depicted in large masses in Alkor’s works such as Eros and Caliban Triptych are also creatures of this world.
Another work, titled Janus, orients the viewer towards the mythological god of time who is depicted as having two faces, emphasizing the abstract and concrete aspects of reality. The double and secret personalities we observe from her early works on orient us towards masks. In my opinion, masks (personas) occupy an important place in Bilge’s work. Looking at her works in various media such as painting, photography and stones, we observe a wide spectrum of such masks that develop and vary, turn their gaze towards the viewer from unexpected corners of the work, assume different functions and augment the meaning of the work. This is an act similar to narrating the story of, assuming the powers of another, or replacing it. In Bilge’s work, figure appears before us as a mythological or literary form, or a form that makes us think that it bears probable references to the world of memories.
As for the paintings she made in the period from 1980 to 1990 which she spent in Germany, large, uncanny figures, at times depicted as transparent shapes, swiftly appear and disappear thanks to clues provided in works such as Adam’s Dream, The Angel of Death, The Queen of the Night and The Hidden Ring, and also The Heavy Night, where a reclining couple who recalls a petrified timelessness has been depicted. The artist successfully uses transparency to create this affect. Yet, transparency is certainly not the alone here: Opaque paint accompanies it. But somehow, it is that evanescence, that lightness that leaves a lasting impression. The application of paint, based around certain gestures, is developed in harmony with meaning and intention.
Silence and The Sleep of Reason could be perceived as homage to Goya, as in Goya’s famous capriccio The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. This work also features the face of Juno, a mask. Rather than formal similarity, Alkor concurs with the great master in meaning.
The artist has also made landscapes, although they are few in number. Internalized images such as Ovindoli and Termessos, from her period in Italy, could be considered among this group. The later Night Again features a figure with its back to the landscape. However, the painting does not depict night, but a landscape that gives hope. Night, then, must be a sentiment of the figure in the foreground.
In Bilge Alkor’s paintings, space contributes greatly to the narrative. Space is an environment within which figures strive to exist, reflecting their troubles, and used successfully by the artist. The uncanny large figures in the foreground of the paintings are alone, in endless sleep, dramatic, withdrawn, and loaded with impenetrable secrets. They seek to remind the viewer of this, and almost warn him or her.
In her paintings, Bilge Alkor restructures photography as a tool that renders an imagined reality tangible, and adds pictorial authenticity to it. She also uses photography as a tool that assists in the transition to pictorial language. Both in painting and photography, the technique used for expression involves intersecting, multilayered superimpositions.
Musical Forms – Compositions
One could propose that Bilge Alkor, who from 1958 to 1961 worked [studied] at the Munich Fine Arts Academy, felt an affinity to Kandinsky’s ideas. In one interview, she mentions that during her time in Germany, she read books on both the works and artistic theories of the “Der Blaue Reiter Group,” and especially Kandinsky and Klee, and that they formed the cornerstone of her art.
The artist’s series, inspired by Shakespeare’s plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tempest, Schubert’s Winterreise lieds and Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera, in which she conceptually combines music, painting and the stage, are among the most successful examples of interaction between different disciplines of art.
Inspired by the plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tempest, “Journey from One Art to Another,” the title Alkor chose for her exhibition held in 1996 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre, could be considered as an early sign of her ideas in this field yielding concrete results. Characters such as “Titania, the Queen of Fairies,” “King Oberon” and “Bottom” take their places in her work both in name and as figures.
In “Winter Journey,” a series produced from 2000 to 2005, not only the titles, but also textual and visual clues concealed within the work, act as “poetic” links that consolidate meaning. In this series, dominated by winter tones, and in which the line occasionally takes precedence as an element to express meaning, all images complement each other, and collectively form continuity. Using emphasis and softness, and powerful contrasts, the artist conveys music to the canvas. In this series, which I would be inclined to describe as her masterpiece, the temporal aspect is related to the dissemination of the image across the surface of the painting, and with the concept of continuity in music. Both on the surface and in the depth of the painting, the composition is formed and given meaning with an ebb and flow movement related to time.
As for “The Magic Flute” featuring, among others, “The Queen of the Night,” “Sarastro,” “Papageno the Birdman,” “Tamino,” “Pamina” there colour and elusive transparency dominate. “The Magic Flute” is the work that perhaps best fits Bilge Alkor’s words when she says, “The world of dreams has always been an important leitmotif in my works.” The painting takes the viewer on a tour of a dream universe.
I belive that Bilge Alkor’s work, with the unique approach and interpretation it displays, occupies a privileged place in the contemporary painting scene. This advanced and deeply sophisticated body of work is the outcome of a viewpoint she has continued to develop since the early period of her artistic career. Alkor’s work occupies a special place in our painting with concepts and a worldview with outstanding sensitivity.
The poet Auden finds that only composers are primary creators. “All the rest translate” he says in one line, meaning poets, painters, and story-tellers.
The privileged position assigned by Auden to music may seem a bit exaggerated, and perhaps one might go a step further and defend the proposition that composers, too, are translators; for the view that all art includes a translating function can hardly be dismissed as trivial.
There is an approach which starts with the Post-Romantics, goes on from one end (if such there be) to the other of the modern period, and with the Post-Moderns truly comes into its own: the tendency for creation to deal with creating, with the act of creation, and indeed with the creative territory of others.
In speaking of translation, inspiration, the creative spark or “establishing a dialogue,” I trust it is perfectly clear that no reductive judgement is intended on my part. And selecting a few works as a point of departure should not take us beyond the words of Archimedes: Perhaps not “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the earth,” but at least “Give me a partner and I will expand my own limits.” Henceforward, the other is an excuse for a voyage toward myself.
Bilge Alkor’s new exhibition at the Atatürk Cultural Center (and it will gain an added dimension from her concurrent exhibition of photography at the Maçka Art Gallery) is entitled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream/The Tempest:”An exhibition which has arisen, blossomed and put forth from Shakespeare’s two plays.
One must first speak here of a “project”: these are not the sort of paintings having that natural coherence which comes from being executed during a given period, not the kind of work which is first begun and only later baptised. No, what we have here is a premeditated, consciously built exhibition.
Has Bilge Alkor set out to illustrate two Shakespeare plays? Hardly. Her aim is rather to read Shakespeare; independent of the classical systems of reading, breaking through that “left to right, top to bottom” approach which Rimbaud teased (or mocked), she has given us a profound, oblique reading which staggers the viewer.
Perhaps this is why one hesitates to call what Alkor has done an essay at translation, or somehow an interpretation. During an interview with Cevat Çapan in this month’s issue of Arredamento Dekorasyon, the artist sheds light on the way she works. Her original, one might even say forced, approach to Jan Kott (like Cevat Çapan I have my reservations here), along with Peter Greenaway’s adaptation Prospero’s Books (here too I do not see eye-to-eye with Alkor), underlie her demonstration that the dialogue she has established is many-faceted.
Bilge Alkor does not stand outside the subject to comment or interpret, nor does she see (or show) from her own self as center; rather a trip through the entire exhibition makes one think that she has chosen to remain within Shakespeare, to purge herself of all interpretations to date and take on the pure, bare state of Word and Image, there to become once more “incarnate” – that this is something she has not only done, but dared to do.
The hardest thing about the classics are those judgements which so easily are brought up, yet somehow elude our grasp. How readily one takes refuge in “To be or not to be,” yet when we reach for it the thing is suddenly transformed, and we are tormented wondering just what sort of thing it is.
Alkor’s exhibition is precisely a documentation of this searing pilgrimage. The superb Shakespeare translations of Can Alkor certainly have been of help to the artist, but it is the viewer yielding himself up to the swirling currents in this hall who most benefits from them, as a kind of precious key.
Thanks to this we come to see more clearly just what kind of fire Bilge Alkor has dared to hold in the palm of her hand, holding it there with no cooling. And we realize how the most innocent-seeming text, the most guileless-seeming lines, can drag us to the edge of madness.
It behoves us, however, not to dally overlong with words. Better to consider them, if required, on their own in a seperate space. Here in the exhibition hall they occur alongside the canvasses, usually outside their frames. Yet there are times when the artist has included them in the picture, like a forehead’s jewelry, an umbrella or canopy. Yet she imposes a boundary on them, saying, “These were there to begin with, and now we have these,” drawing the viewer into her creation.
Yes, now we have color, form born of color, and voices which are sometimes muffled by form, sometimes released. Since the 1970s I have done my best to follow the work of Bilge Alkor, in whom from the outset I have detected a dilemma which she constantly probes between mass and the void. My impression is that her research is into a harmony or balance which she can bring about only by opposing to matter and materially visible that which is more elusive. Hers is an eye which darts from water to stone, from the body to its shadow, from reality to dream, always caught between these poles, taking them both in. It is not even clear which arises out of which, or which is the “real” version of the other. I believe that this artist enjoys leaving her work suspended.
In swimming slowly toward Shakespeare’s isle, negotiating a wide sea, Bilge Alkor has been well honed by her extremes, between water and earth, water and fire, fire and air. The exhibition bears the marks of an absolute modulation. Who has slept this deep and lovely sleep? Who has been so harshly, fretfully awake? These dreams, do they come from the playwright, these daydreams from the artist?
The portraits of Caliban – from the rear, walking, sitting, standing and vaguely moaning (I can hear it) – make me realize that the artist in the end has truly met up with him. Unknown to us, but it has reached the artist. Another artist beside me, Fatma Tülin, remarks on how no black is used in The Prince of Darkness, and on the shiver this sends through her. Somewhat further ahead another poet, Ahmet Oktay, speaks of red the murderer and gray the victim, and of the region between.
Still further on men and women “come and go, talking of Michelangelo.” I am riveted by Titania, a triptych which I feel could well be placed in one of the world’s great museums.
By now it is night. The lights of the hall are out, its keepers have locked up and gone down, the artist gone home after a long, tiring day. In the dark and silent hall, as the city flows by outside with its roar and light, the canvasses are beyond, and begin to stir. Prospero’s voice carries defeat, Caliban’s a kind of melancholy, while Titania’s is divided between merriment and despair. Among all these voices, Night, Sleep and Dream have found their true spaces.
Bilge Alkor’s wind-storm of a show is like a mirage in the desert.
Cevat Çapan: It’s a question of cross-pollination among the arts. A poet may be inspired by music, or a novelist look at a painting and get his idea. When you ask a playwright what his or her starting point was, you get different answers. Maybe something happened to them, so they sat down to write a play. Another playwright will say, “While I was in the army we went to a church, and a mural I saw there inspired me to write.” So little bits of reality or specially intense moments may crystallize in this way. The history of world art offers many examples of such interaction; and people working in the same branch of art are influenced by a predecessor, taking his work and refashioning it to reflect the intellectual complexity of their age. Some great masters provide inspiration to all the artistic generations that follow them – and Shakespeare is among these.
Looking at these pictures, we see that they emanate from two Shakespeare plays; A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. Plays with a very interesting cast of characters. Oberon, Titania, Puck, Caliban… And there are some with supernatural powers, like Ariel and Prospero. Which shows that Shakespeare’s world is one which reflects reality in an all-embracing way. There are real characters, but also those from the land of faery, more than real, or not real. This has prompted some to say that Shakespeare is not a realist but a romantic. His comedies are so described even in text-books. But a closer look reveals that infact these plays are realistic in the broadest sense of the word, with a realism that also includes dreams and the imagination.
The paintings have shown to me just how important a part of reality this dream-like quality is. Needless to say, they are not sketches done by a director planning to stage the plays, nor by a set or costume designer. We have here a much more original type of creativity, of inspiration. But if the pictures are inspired by the plays, it is in a manner which in no way detracts from their originality. So it might be appropriate to talk about what kind of inspiration this is.
Bilge Alkor: First of all I was inspired by that realism you mentioned finding in Shakespeare. A realism of the fantastic. A few years ago I did a painting inspired by Yunus Emre, Incarnated as Flesh and Bone. I get the same feeling from Shakespeare’s characters, with their profound, extremely complex layers of psyche. The cry out for incarnation in flesh and bone.
CÇ: Shakespeare’s works are so rich that they really do satisfy that idea of incarnation we find in Yunus.
Someone who encounters Shakespeare, let’s say an actor or actress, they may be content merely to utter the beautiful lines. Or an author who is greatly cut off from his surroundings may select out just the dark elements. Or a Hollywood scenario might make Macbeth into a gangster. This is perhaps a kind of “struggling” to express various separate features of Shakespeare’s world. But I think a better approach is that “incarnation;” how Shakespeare’s characters live in their natural settings, and how their relations with other persons as a whole reveal themselves through their awareness of, and response to, those natural surroundings. In this sense much can be done by an art like painting, which has the power to express physical reality.
BA: I fully agree. And this power varies in richness according to the character. Let’s take Prospero and Caliban. The former is a Renaissance aristocrat such as we see in the portraits of Rafaello and Tiziano, so there is little difficulty in imagining his face and bearing, even his clothes. Whereas Caliban is much more complicated, and in my view not a depraved character. You’ve seen the film Prospero’s Books. I feel that Greenaway’s slant was way off the mark. There Caliban was just an evil djinn bending and wavering like some bodiless smoke. To me he’s a native of the Bermuda Isles, downtrodden and suffering, a king deprived of his kingdom. In short, a bundle of unfulfilled potential; and so more “photogenic.” Indeed, the Caliban triptych is called Identikit. Prospero, now, if Jan Kott is right symbolizes the end of an age, the vanishing of hopes. A sort of Faust or Leonardo who finally realizes that magical powers will not suffice to create a proper world. A tragic figure, certainly, but not in the play, where he merely works to exact revenge. He is only great at the very end, in the monologue which one thinks of as Shakespeare’s own. How do you see it?
CÇ: That’s a very interesting approach. Trying to follow Shakespeare’s career from beginning to end, we see that there’s a perpetual conflict between light and dark. This dialectical division appears as light and shadow, or literally light and darkness. When he writes the tragedies the scales tip in favor of darkness, while in the comedies there is light. But Shakespeare was not an author who wrote comedies to speak purely of light, or tragedies to speak purely of darkness. Knowing that the two are intertwined, he set aside the classic definitions of the genre. The tragedies have fools, and several of the comedies have a distinct dark side. And then there are the histories, which Shakespeare wrote throughout his career, describing civil war and some of the darkest days of England. But in comedies written at the same period there are incidents implying a cheerful world. As Shakespeare matured, however, this ceases to be a simple contrast, and there is a definite process of evolution. Thus the last comedy, Twelfth Night, is melancholy; and yet it has features from all the previous comedies: change of identity, a girl posing as a man, twins… All the tricks he had used one at a time in earlier plays suddenly are brought together. Meanwhile the tragedies cease to be a simple matter of revenge, becoming stoical. King Lear probes the limits of human endurance. The questions return: How much can a person stand? Is readiness all, or ripeness? Perhaps it was living in the age he did that made Shakespeare round out his plays with this pessimism. As the palace lost control of events following the death of Elizabeth, and as intrigue possessed the court, the tragedies become darker. And King Lear may be the most embroiled of all. But is this Shakespeare’s last word, the way he finally sees the world? In the later plays, which we can call romances or plays of reconciliation, we see not only dark, tragic elements, but also the light of the comedies. The jealousy, death and loss which mark the tragedies are here, but in the latter half of the plays there is forgiveness, an entente with reality and the world.
BA: But not in The Tempest.
CÇ: Certainly this reconciliation is not of the exuberant kind that appears in the comedies. Not, as there, a happy ending; yet the curtain does not close on utter despair. Prospero’s closing speech is a kind of return to the light. At least that is my reading of it. Because we see a movement there, from the dark towards the light.
BA: I see it as just the opposite, as if the play were reverting to its start. Natural laws will obtain, the incidents will begin anew. Prospero, too, senses this. But now there is nothing he can do about it. Actually, a kind of order now obtains. Caliban is aware of his misdeeds, Miranda and Ferdinand are together at last, playing chess, and Prospero himself is Duke of Milan. Everything is so upbeat at the end, but that final speech…
CÇ: There’s another thing, though. They experience disaster. If they’ve learned what they’ve been through, if that knowledge can stand them in good stead later, this could be taken as redemption.
BA: I hadn’t thought of it that way. Meaning I have a more pessimistic view.
CÇ: Jan Kott brings Shakespeare together with Beckett, and reads certain Shakespeare plays as being absurd. I believe this shows how even in Shakespeare’s day life could be interpreted from many different angles. In your paintings I find the same richness of expression.
BA: They’re an attempt to reflect Shakespeare’s complexity…
CÇ: One of the plays is a comedy, the other has both tragical and comical elements. Comparing the two, can they be seen as comlementary? Why these two plays?
BA: These are my favorite plays from Shakespeare. I think I’m especially open to a mixture of nature poetry and the “supernatural.” And I should add a note about A Midsummer Night’s Dream: There’s an important theme running through all my works on the realm of dreams. As for certain characters and situations in The Tempest, to me they are “archetypes” – something I also find in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, by the way. There Prospero is Sarastro, while Ferdinand and Miranda are Tamino and Pamina. They have to pass through a trial by fire, just as the lovers in The Tempest cannot come together without a test. Monostatos is a sort of Caliban. In Prospero’s phrase, they “are such stuff as dreams are made of,” yet real.
CÇ: Now there’s an interesting point here. In Shakespeare what we see, and the reality that lies behind it – one might say various extensions of reality – give the play tension and dramatic power. And in a pictorial medium this is one of the things which shows the power of painting. If it were otherwise, painting would have died out after the invention of photography. When I saw your paintings, I felt that they reflected a sensual world. Of course Shakespeare’s plays are very rich intellectually, there’s no argument about that. He’s an author of philosophic depth, but at the same time so sensual. When it’s a question of Eros, the personages are real flesh and blood. Smells and colors are so important, and the sense of touch. Very few playwrights have approached Shakespeare in this regard.
BA: That’s true. All this makes me think of Oscar Wilde and the Truth of Masks. I have another exhibition coming up, which again is based on Shakespeare. It’s of photographs taken at the carnival in Venice. A carnival is a play in which one’s everyday persona is hidden behind masks and costumes, where repressed drives are staged according to their own rules. And whenever any play is staged, it is impossible not to find something of Shakespeare in the festival of costumes, colors and motion. At the same time Venice is a backstage calling up images of that Renaissance world which one constantly senses in The Tempest, even if it is not seen. In short, reality is presented in Shakespeare not only with words, but also sensually and visually. I don’t agree with Artaud when he reduces Shakespeare to psychology and the textual theater, for I feel that what matters in those plays is not so much the characters and their lines as their inner voices, the tensions, and the situations by which these are revealed. In that respect the plays of Shakespeare seem highly modern. Eros, for example, who was in my opinion the backbone of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I made my Eros triptych headless: there are bodies, but their identity is unknown, anonymous. There is a transformation, a confusing, of identities which Hermia is unable to solve (“Am I not Hermia, are not you Lysander?”). After Romeo and Juliet the Eros of A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes as a great surprise. What’s your reading of this?
CÇ: Now there is a gradual tendency in Shakespeare to confuse reality, and this can be treated in a more linear fashion by considering Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Anthony and Cleopatra. A theater or director with this concern might stage these three plays consecutively in one season. What do we learn from this? The youthful love of Romeo and Juliet, although sex is part of it – indeed, the sexuality is very powerful – nevertheless has a certain innocence, while in Troilus and Cressida things are more complex, that love cannot be all that innocent. And in Anthony and Cleopatra, the lovers have gained an immense degree of experience. The love there is mature, expressed with all its problems and complexity. The last play is of course the most successful of the three. Getting back to Artaud, I think his interpretation stems from the French attitude toward Shakespeare. Perhaps they are against him simply because he is rarely staged in their country. If mediocre performers see Shakespeare merely as a chance to intone great speeches, and show off their gestures, it’s only natural that Artaud will object to him. But I must say, the theater of savagery which Artaud demands is most strikingly seen in Shakespeare. Think of all the examples: King Lear, where Gloucester’s eyes are put out; and then Titus Andronicus and Macbeth. In 1956 Peter Brook got together an experimental group in London, with which he did “Artaud studies” at the same time he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Theater. This was just as the Theater of Savagery was working up Marat-Sade. With that group Brook created his own version of the theater Artaud demanded, while at the same time he used elements which smacked of Beckett. In staging King Lear, Brook also was mindful of the affinity between Shakespeare and Brecht. Of course one realizes that Jan Kott also learned something from Peter Brook.
BA: Then they’re a bit like Prospero and Ariel, or Oberon and Puck.
CÇ: And in fact Caliban is one of their company.
BA: Well, there you have it. There are very real characters among us.
CÇ: That’s sure. That’s why Peter Brook’s approach to Shakespeare is so interesting to me, especially when combined with the way an artist – in this case Bilge Alkor – sees the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest, not to mention how Ariel and Puck can appear as meaningful characters, or what colors they might take on – again, in the hands of an artist.
BA: The tradition of these characters go far back. Puck, for instance, is straight out of the Commedia del’Arte. So I painted him with his character hidden behind a mask.
CÇ: One might think of Arlecchino.
BA: Precisely. A mocking figure, who turns the laws of the universe upside-down, makes fun of them, and above all entertains himself. Compared to him I find Ariel much more of an aristocrat, far more lyrical.
CÇ: More “literary,” perhaps. These words derive from Prospero’s books. A more difficult character for the painter to grasp, much more difficult to depict.
BA: A figure whose character is more clouded, one might say murkier. Harder to give in tangible form. I tried to capture Ariel as an eddy the wind forms and disperses, a rose compacted of wind. And Oberon I imagined as a scarecrow. As a scarecrow might be able to assume Oberon’s character, or Titania lying in the weeds take on the form of a beast (think of Ovid’s Metamorphoses). To me, these are the truths inherent in great myths.
“Allow me right away to ask you, dear reader, haven’t there thus far been hours, days—nay, weeks—when daily tasks haven't given you anything besides boredom and discontent, and when everything you believed in and valued lost its meaning?” (Hoffmann, 2021: 25)
This article will examine Bilge Alkor's interpretation of romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tales. Although the painter's point of departure is the writer's works, her technique and her manner of interpreting images makes for an original language. It is also important which images Alkor uses to draw connections with today's world when interpreting Hoffmann's tales.
In the early 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling discussed the concept of the uncanny in his book Philosophy of Mythology, reading Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Sandman" through this lens. According to Schelling, uncanniness is “the name given to something that should remain hidden and concealed but that is out in the open." (Freud, 1999:327-351) Ernst Jentsch carried this concept over to psychoanalysis in 1906, placing doubt as to whether a being or object is living or non-living at the heart of the uncanny. Automatons and wax sculptures, Jentsch argued, exemplify this phenomenon. In his 1919 article titled "The Uncanny" (Das Unheimlich), Freud added to this definition the return of the repressed and associated the concept with childhood memories.
The concept of the uncanny, put forth by Sigmund Freud in 1919, evokes that which is not frightening and yet inspires fear and horror. Uncanniness has to do with the person's past and opens up a corridor in time. The relationship of the frightening with the past and the fact that the object is not unfamiliar to the person render the uncanny rather complex.
“It is to leave the reader in uncertainty and to do it in a way so that the reader's attention is not directly focused on this uncertainty; that way, the reader cannot directly intervene in the issue and solve it quickly.” (Freud,1999: 333)
The concept of the uncanny is associated with a sense of insecurity and mental uncertainty due to an inability to adapt to the environment. This concept, in Hoffmann's tales, is the threshold between reality and fantasy, and this threshold is formless. As the figures mutating in the fog of uncertainty push the limits of the mind, the extraordinary becomes ordinary. The aim of this article is to explore the way some of the major images in Hoffmann's tales appear in Bilge Alkor's painting language and to look into the evolution of the images in this regard. The stories in question are "The Doge and the Dogaressa", "Princess Brambilla", "The Sandman", "The Golden Pot", and "Mademoiselle Scudéri". The images featured in these stories that emerge in the paintings can be listed as the skull, the sea, the mysterious man in a cape, the dress, the carnival, the mask, the eye, the snake, the apple, the elder tree, the dagger, and the jewel.
THE MYSTERIOUS FIGURE
The tale titled “The Doge and the Dogaressa” was first published in the 1819 book Die Serapionsbrüder. It is the story of the eponymous painting that was featured in the Berlin Academy of Arts's 1816 catalogue. The painting of the old doge and dogaressa is located in front of the view of Venice. Furthermore, the poem etched into the painting's frame reveals the secret meaning of the painting.
“Oh! Loveless
It crashes into the sea
With the sea's husband
Unconsoled” (Hoffmann, 2021:278)
The crowd in front of the painting is discussing the purpose for which the painting was made. A mysterious man with a grey cape overhears this and starts to tell the story of the painting. The whole story is related by the man in the grey cape. The main characters of the story are Doge Marino Falieri and his wife Annunziata.
“Deep within the self of an artist is a peculiar mystery that causes a picture to form. Such images, which, up until then, linger in a fog in the void and cannot be defined for their lack of form, find their forms deep in the artist's soul and come alive, as though they have finally found their home." (Hoffmann, 2021:279)
There are two stories working in parallel here. The first is that of Antonio, and the second, that of the Doge.
The child of a noble and rich family, a boy named Antonio is orphaned. When his father is murdered by his enemies, Antonio is left in the custody of a friend of his father's. One day as he is sleeping in the garden, a snake slithers up to him. Another child, noticing this, kills the snake, thereby saving Antonio's life. The story from the past ends here. In the other story, Doge Marino Falieri marries a young and beautiful woman named Annunziata. Before Marino Falieri becomes doge, he gets into a situation in which his boat is about to be capsized, and Antonio saves his life. Antonio and Annunziata fall in love with each other at first sight. The second story is joined to the first when it is revealed that Annunziata was the one who saved Antonio’s life as a child. As for the Doge, he is among the murderers of Antonio’s father. As the two lovers attempt to run away on a gondola, the sea swallows them.
The Doge, who says in the beginning of the story that he is married to the sea, is thus avenged by his spouse, the sea.
“Ah! Senza amare
Andare sul mare
Col sposo del mare
Non puo consolare” (Hoffmann, 2021:278)
THE NANNY
The nanny figure in the story enables both Antonio and the two lovers to recognize each other. However, just as in Hoffmann’s other tales, the nanny's face is transformed. While in some of the writer's tales this is caused by magic, in this one it is a result of torture by the Inquisition.
The face, body, and bearing of the nanny in the story, Margareta, resemble those of a freak. This is because the healing aspect of the woman is framed as a sign of evil by her enemies, and she undergoes torture following her trial by the Inquisition. The nanny is an important figure who foresees everything and guides Antonio.
THE SEA
The voiceless main character of the story is the Adriatic Sea. The sea is so attached to the Doge that it mercilessly kills those who betray him. A hallmark of Hoffmann's tales is that they do not have happy endings. While it is stated in the tale that Antonio dies, the man in the grey cape is intimated to be Antonio and this mystery is left unresolved.
As stated in the poem below the painting as well, Doge Falieri is in love with the sea, which resembles a fierce, jealous, and somewhat unstable woman.
Figure 1: Bilge Alkor, "Doge ve Dogaressa" [The Doge and the Dogaressa], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p.15, Istanbul, 2022.
The sea, which almost capsizes the Doge's boat in the beginning of the work, swallows up the boat of the two lovers at the end. Alkor uses two images to convey the power and rage of the Adriatic Sea. The first is a paper boat. Located on a black background, the boat is in the middle of the blue squiggly lines that symbolize the sea. The blue lines are about to encircle the paper boat.
The other image that depicts the sea is the woman's body with a skull for a head. The woman is wearing a sea-blue dress and holding two intersecting circles. The two circles, symbolizing the two lovers, indicate that the lovers' fate is in the hands of the sea and presages their deaths. The motif of the circle also connotes the line that cannot be crossed and alludes to eternity.
THE MASK
Bilge Alkor represents the two lovers through masks. Annunziata is symbolized by a beautiful woman mask, which is rendered with the texture of cracked soil, whose red lines and curves portray Annunziata’s love for Antonio. The mask that symbolizes Antonio is red and orange, with the eyes made up of light spectra created by the refraction of light. The light filtered through the crystal is the reflection of the past.
Another tale that features a mask is "Princess Brambilla". In the story, which is inspired by a painting, the mask is a means of concealment and transformation. It is the distance placed between the true self and the representative self.
PRINCESS BRAMBILLA / THE MAGIC DRESS
E. T. A. Hoffmann's story “Princess Brambilla” is based off of Callot's capriccios, and, in the story, the carnival and masks are metaphors in and of themselves.
A seamstress girl named Giacinta is preparing a dress for the carnival together with her old master. The dress is so magnificent that they think only a princess can wear it. Blood and kerosene are spilled on the dress, but the stains disappear on their own. When Giacinta tries the dress on, she looks like a princess.
Figure 2: Bilge Alkor, Prenses Brambilla/Büyülü Elbise [Princess Brambilla / The Magic Dress], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 176, Istanbul, 2022.
The dress, which gets rid of stains on its own, constitutes the threshold between the real and the fantastical worlds in this fairy tale-like story of Hoffmann's. Giglio Fava is a poor theater actor who is in love with Giacinta. He sees Princess Brambilla in his dream and falls in love with her. He will pursue his dream throughout the story, which proceeds in the manner of a carnival.
The acid-soaked prints of Jacques Callot (1592-1635) that inspired Hoffmann feature unusual images featuring thin, elongated figures. In these mise-en-scenes, Callot portrays marginalized figures and the follies of mankind. (Gombrich, 2004: 385).
Translating the story into the plastic arts, Alkor hangs the symbolic dress on a hanger with a large hook. The blood stain is big enough to be visible amid the silver sparkly material. She who wears the dress takes on its soul. The mask symbolizing Giacinta is beautiful and embellished with carnival make-up. A yellow star hangs down from the forehead toward the space between the brows. Though Giglio may see himself as a talented actor, he is nothing more than a jester. Alkor conveys this idea through the jester's hat on the head of the actor form. Transparent areas express how the person sees themselves and how they really are. Further, the neon red heart protruding from the ribcage conveys the intensity of Giglio's love and its powerful influence.
Alkor has used the photo-painting technique in interpreting Hoffmann’s fairy talesque stories. Forming collections of objects, Alkor has arranged and photographed them, transferred them onto a computer, and painted over the photographs. According to Alkor, Hoffmann is the pinnacle of fantastical realism.
THE EYE –ALCHEMY-THE SANDMAN
Another story taken up in the context of the uncanny is "The Sandman". Published in the book Nachtstücke in 1817, the story tells of the re-emergence in adulthood of a childhood trauma. According to Freud, Nathanael's childhood fear of castration is reshaped through the uncanny images he sees later on in life.
“The Sandman” tells the story of a monster haunting a child whose father dies in an explosion at home when the wrong substances are mixed during an alchemy experiment.
The sandman figure belongs to an old fairy tale that has been told through the ages to scare children who won't go to sleep at night. The sandman throws sand at children's eyes, after which the children get so sleepy that they cannot open their eyes. According to certain myths, the sandman collects the eyes of those children who don't want to sleep. Children thus shut their eyes tight out of fear of this figure.
The man who conducts experiments with Nathanael’s father is called Coppelius/Coppola, and, according to Nathanael, Coppelius is the sandman himself.
“He was a non-imaginary, despicable monster and everywhere he went he brought unhappiness and not temporary but eternal destruction." (Hoffmann, 2021:104)
The years go by fast after the father passes away. Nathanael is in university when he encounters Coppelius, this time as a salesman of barometers, glasses, and binoculars. He sends a letter to a friend expressing his shock, but the letter finds its way to his girlfriend, Klara, who tells Nathaniel that there is no such thing as the sandman and that alchemy experiments, not a monster, caused the death of his father.
“This is a ghost created by our minds, and it elevates us to heaven or hell with its close relationship to us and the deep effect it has on us.” (Hoffmann, 2021: 111) Nathanael is of a different opinion than Klara. For him, life is made up of dreams and premonitions.
Nathanael falls in love with Olympia, the daughter of Professor Spalanzi, from whom he is taking classes. Just as he is about to marry her, he witnesses a quarrel between the professor and Coppelius. “Coppelius stole my best automaton—twenty years' work—I gave it my life. The cog work, the language, the locomotion—it's all my doing—the eyes...” (Hoffmann, 2021:133)
Word gets out of this in academic circles. Nathanael cannot believe what he is experiencing. The professor disappears so as not to be prosecuted for tricking human society by putting an automaton in their midst. Time goes by, and it seems like Nathanael has forgotten all that he has gone through. He is back with Clara, and they are preparing for their wedding. After a walk, they go up to the municipality tower to look down on where they live. At that moment, Nathanael lifts the binoculars he bought from Coppola to his eyes and loses his mind upon what he sees or thinks he sees. He tries to push Clara down, saying "Spin round, wooden doll!" Clara is saved by her brother who arrives at the scene in time. Nathanael jumps off the tower and dies.
The Sandman/Coppelius/Coppola is the figure that kills love. The story reflects examples of experiments with alchemy and the creation of automatons in the 19th century.
English poet Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem on alchemy speaks of how so many have been consumed by the pursuit and harmed by their endeavors:
“Listen to
My words and steer clear of alchemy
If you don't understand it there's no sense to what the philosophers
Say but should you want to be selected
The world's dumbest man continue on blindly
For no one can penetrate that secret” (Öndin, 2017: 19)
Perhaps what is meant is just bad alchemists, those who allow for the supremacy of demons. Every substance is purported to contain four elements (air, water, fire, earth). The alchemist contends he can alter these ratios to produce gold, and conducts experiments for this purpose.
The beautiful Clara is represented in Alkor's lines in the same form but in different colors. Nathanael’s love features in the picture through the red roses. In time, Nathanael is to fall in love with the automaton Olympia, and, even further, to believe in the myth of the Sandman. The mentally unstable Nathanael has been unable to overcome his past trauma, and the psychological damage he has suffered has taken over him.
THE AUTOMATON
Bilge Alkor has initially preserved the integrity of Olympia's form. She has conveyed that Olympia is a wind-up doll through the crank at the back. Though her head has remained the same, her body has been represented with all her accessories. The perfect face and the perfect eyes that have been extracted symbolize a deformed body image. Olympia’s eyes remain with Coppola—just as in the myth of the Sandman, the monster who collects the eyes of naughty children.
Figure 3: Bilge Alkor, Kum Adam [The Sandman], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p.142, Istanbul, 2022.
Alkor has conveyed the mood and repugnance of Coppelius/Coppola through physical deformity. Coppola sells spectacles and magnifying glasses. Collecting children's eyes in the world of monsters, this creature has a similar job in the world of humans: the sale of glasses and binoculars.
Professor Spalanzani’s face recalls African masks. While the dents and lines on the mask convey lived experience, it is also the case that the automaton the professor introduces as his daughter resembles himself. Meanwhile, Nathanael is nothing but a puppet with empty forms where his eyes should be. He has been hypnotized and is filled with traces of the past. Both the presence and absence of his eyes bear references to the spiritual. The puppet is that which cannot act of its own will and is instead under the influence of other forces.
THE SERPENT-THE ELDER TREE
Published in 1814, "The Golden Pot" is, in the author's words, "a fairy tale set in our time". Made up of twelve sections consisting of twelve night shifts, it tells the story of Anselmus's gradual descent to frenzy. That the author intervenes as a character in the story enables an identification between Anselmus and Hoffmann. The writer's characters wander between the superficiality of daily life and the magical effervescence of the supernatural.
The student Anselmus bumps into a woman selling buns and apples as he's walking in a hurry. As he tries to apologize to her, the woman takes all of Anselmus’s money and, on top of that, makes a prophecy.
“Run off then, make yourself scarce, you devil's spawn -soon you will enter the glass- enter into the glass.” (Hoffmann, 202:31) The old woman's prophecy is to come true at the end of the story. Having lost at once all his money, which would have made for a good day, Anselmus sits down under an elder tree and curses his clumsiness. Right at that moment, three green serpents slither down to him, accompanied by the sounds of crystals. Anselmus falls in love with one of these serpents. Around the same time, the university vice president's daughter Veronika falls in love with Anselmus. The far-fetched stories he tells of snakes and the sounds of crystals makes her think he is insane.
Figure 4: Bilge Alkor, Altın Çanak/Serpentina [The Golden Pot / Serpentina], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 103, Istanbul, 2022.
The father of the snakes is called Lindhorst. An archivist, Lindhorst is actually a lizard and the father of the serpents. Anselmus starts to work under the archivist. That way, he will be able to get close to his youngest daughter, Serpentina. The archivist wants to marry his daughter off to Anselmus. Though Veronika is against all these developments, she is powerless to stop them. Anselmus marries Serpentina, whose dowry is a golden pot containing white lilies. White lilies and the golden pot are presented together in Bilge Alkor's work. The lily is sometimes associated with virginity and sometimes with eroticism. It symbolizes purity. A lily growing in a golden pot reflects the light of the rainbow onto its surroundings.
Bilge Alkor represents Lindhorst with a rusty and sorrowful mask. The rust and dirt reference his profession. The lizards that Lindhorst claims as his origins are represented through diamonds and precious stones, while Serpentina is represented at times as a snake with a woman's head and at times as a rainbow-colored supernatural creature with neon green eyelashes.
Regarded as the manifestation of the moon, the serpent is treated as the protector of the tree of life. “The serpent is the manifestation of the moon—it sheds its skin and is rejuvenated; it is immortal, a force that disseminates fertility and science. It is the serpent that protects the sacred springs, the tree of life, and the Fountain of Youth. But it is also the serpent that has taken away the immortality of man." (Beauvoir, 2021: 187)
The writer characterizes Anselmus as a happy person who has shed his burden by the end of the work.
This is the final phase of frenzy or the discovery of a different world. It is a completely different and colorful dimension outside of the traumatic drudgery of everyday life. The struggle to make a living, lovelessness, and mundanity besiege people with all their force.
The mundanity of everyday life is criticized in the beginning of the work as well. The fantastical universe spawns difference, be it through alchemy or through a relationship with insanity. Anselmus’s existential anguish is in fact the common plight of humankind.
THE ELDER TREE
Besides being the first place and context where Anselmus first has visions, the elder tree has throughout time been associated with sorcery and evil powers. The interior of the elder tree erodes very quickly, and it is believed that evil spirits live inside it. Therefore, one must not break off the branches of an elder tree. If branches are broken, it is believed the evil spirits will pour out and that evil will spread.
Figure 5: Bilge Alkor, Altın Çanak/Mürver Ağacı [The Golden Pot / The Elder Tree], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 47, Istanbul, 2022.
In her work on "The Golden Pot", Bilge Alkor has brought the elder tree and Anselmus together. The surface of the earth to which the tree stands rooted has been covered with purple flowers. The trunk of the leafless tree has been rendered with a color turning from grey to black. Anselmus figures between two elder trees as a wooden puppet wearing green clothes.
The elder tree is the symbol of Hecate and tells of curses and the state of having been convicted or condemned. Another superstition is that one must not sleep under the elder tree, which has evil spirits living inside it. According to legend, those who sleep underneath the elder tree have terrible nightmares and even go insane. It is also said that a flute made out of elder trees enables communication with the dead. Elder trees are also supposed to be the optimal material for making magic wands.
Falling asleep under the elder tree, Anselmus lives through the prophecy of the apple seller. According to the prophecy, Anselmus will be trapped in a glass bottle. Bilge Alkor depicts Anselmus as a puppet inside a glass bottle. The choice of a puppet to represent Anselmus is due to his acting outside of his own free will and under the influences of other forces.
THE APPLE SELLER
The nanny, the knower, or the apple seller is a prominent metaphor in Hoffmann’s fairy talesque stories. The relationship of the author's metaphors with the past bears clues relating to the present. For example, in Ancient Greek mythology, Iris comes to a gathering she has not been invited to and throws an apple onto the guests, saying that she brought it for the most beautiful woman. The apple marks the beginning of a period of chaos whose repercussions will extend all the way to the Trojan War. A symbol of disobedience of God's orders and of material pleasure in the Bible, the apple functions as a means of deception in fairy tales. The poisonous but splendid-looking apple given to Snow White leads the princess to sink into a deep sleep.
As for Hoffmann's tale, the scattering of the apple seller's apples spells the beginning of disaster. Later on in the tale, it is seen that the apple seller is not just an apple seller but a witch in disguise. Bilge Alkor depicts this witch, who uses her powers for good, with a gilded mask. Light refracted through the crystal flitters on the mask. While the apple and bun placed near the mask convey the woman's apparent livelihood, the fact that this not her real occupation is indicated through the use of the mask. Alkor has depicted the sage woman who can transform herself into a door knocker in this mode as well.
The daughter of the university vice president's daughter, Veronica, is in love with Anselmus. With her beauty and her ornamentation, she resembles a porcelain doll. The witch, who is Veronica’s nanny, is looking out for the young woman's interest. The witch, like the nanny in Hoffmann’s “The Doge and the Dogaressa”, is unrecognizable in appearance. The nannies recognize the children they have raised, but the children don't recognize their nannies. In both tales, the nannies are sage figures, which is why they have been shunned to the margins of society. In “The Doge and the Dogaressa”, the nanny has been tried by the Inquisition for witchcraft and had her skin peeled off as punishment, while in "The Golden Pot", the witch has been subjected to ostracism and social isolation.
MURDER
“Mademoiselle de Scudéri” is the story of a murder set in the 17th century in the hotbed of crime, Paris. The interesting events that happen to Mademoiselle de Scudéri, a writer of novels about heroism, constitute the plot of the story. The story takes off when a mysterious man comes to Mademoiselle de Scudéri's house in the middle of one night and leaves a case containing a box of jewels. In the end of the story, Mademoiselle de Scudéri clears an innocent person of charges and sheds light on the murder to reveal the true killer. She becomes the hero of a text whose story she writes herself.
The 17th century witnessed difficult to solve murders with the advent of technological developments. The increase in chemistry and alchemy experiments is correlated with that in criminal activity. A poison is discovered on accident during alchemy experiments. This poison is so potent that it kills without leaving behind a trace. The Italian chemist Exili who finds the odorless and tasteless poison teaches the recipe to a lieutenant while in prison. The lieutenant kills all his enemies using this poison as soon as he gets out of prison but dies when he accidentally sniffs the poison as he is making it. This mode of death spreads. Everyone is suspicious of one another.
“Murder, like a sinister and invisible specter, seeped in everywhere, even the narrowest of circles characterized by family, love, and friendship relations, and snatched up its unfortunate victims with the utmost precision and celerity.” (Hoffmann, 2004:22)
The poisonings stop when Exili’s last student dies and the list of people he sold the poison to is secured by the police. But this time, it is jewelry theft that is terrorizing Paris. The jewelry thief stabs his victims in the heart with a dagger. Urban legends proliferate about how the shadow-thief can disappear into the walls or appear from the ground out of nowhere. All of the stolen jewelry belongs to Paris's most famous jeweler, René Cardillac. In a discussion of the murders, Mademoiselle de Scudéri says that “A lover who is afraid of thieves is not worthy of love." (Hoffmann, 2004: 34) These words find their way to the thief himself, who sends Mademoiselle de Scudéri a box of jewels along with a letter of thanks.
Jeweler Renè Cardillac is killed one day as the murders rage on. The prime suspect is Cardillac’s apprentice, Oliver. The jewelry murders thus reach an end, but things are in fact not at all as they seem. Oliver says that he will tell his story only to Mademoiselle de Scudéri. It is revealed that Oliver's mother is Mademoiselle de Scudéri's goddaughter.
Oliver reveals that after started working under the jeweler René Cardillac, he began to develop feelings for his daughter, Madelon. Sensing this, Cardillac threw Oliver out of the house. At a loss about what to do, Oliver wandered around the house when he saw a silhouette going through a mysterious door. He followed the silhouette, only to discover that it was Cardillac. Oliver witnessed Cardillac commit a murder, upon which, Cardillac took him back in and their relationship grew more and more tense. René Cardillac says that he feels a sense of calm when he takes back the jewels he has made. The person who kills Cardillac, in turn, is one of the customers he has attacked.
In Bilge Alkor’s interpretation of “Mademoiselle de Scudéri”, blood-stained jewels and skull-shaped pendants are placed together. The skull in particular is a metaphor that was commonly used in painting and sculpture in the Middle Ages when the plague pandemic led to mass deaths and there emerged what were called Ars Moriendi (The arts of dying well). The skull functioned as a Memento Mori, an object to remind one of one's mortality. The expression of the jewel in skull form suggests that worldly riches will only last until death, and that death is the only abiding truth. In the images which feature the dialectics of death and life as well as that of the precious and the worthless, the jewels, for all their sparkle, evoke death. What makes the story extraordinary is that the murderer is a jeweler. The last person to be suspected is both the thief and the murderer.
Figure 6: Bilge Alkor, Matmazel Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudéri], Hoffmann Masalları Katalog [Tales of Hoffmann - Catalogue], p. 228, Istanbul, 2022.
Bilge Alkor has depicted Oliver with a chain around his neck. At the end of the chain hangs a diamond pendant in the form of a skull. Alkor has thus expressed that Oliver's profession is to determine his destiny. Moreover, the metaphors of the heart and the dagger are also featured in Bilge Alkor’s works since the jeweler stabs his victims in the heart with a dagger. The red area symbolizes blood, which, signifying both life and death, is sacred (Beauvoir, 2021:187). The face of the figure holding the dagger is dark and unclear. Hence, Alkor is also referencing the time when the murders are being committed one after the other and the perpetrator cannot be found.
CONCLUSION
Hoffmann's tales highlight the difference between reality and fantasy. Dreams or fantasies are colorful and sparkling. They intersect as they complete each other. It is unclear where one ends and the other begins, and the uncertainty is beautiful. The primary principle is to lead the reader into doubt. A tense uncertainty surrounds the reader.
Hoffmann's tales have been adapted to music by Offenbach. Hoffmann himself is a composer, a music critic, a writer, a sketch artist, and a caricaturist.
One would not be remiss to say that the stories discussed around concepts like the Gothic, the uncanny, automatons, and alchemy actually have a single reason for being.
The reason for being of the stories is to disrupt the tedium, monotony, or insipidness of life. As Hoffmann accomplishes this through his compositions, drawings, and stories, he renders visible the threshold between reality and fantasy, underscoring the humorous aspect of the supernatural. Fantasies, contrary to the real world, are relatively far warmer and more colorful, joyful, and reliable. The tedium of everyday life is conveyed through characters in academic circles. Professor Spalanzi in "The Sandman" and the university vice president in "The Golden Pot" serve this purpose. Sound in the stories morphs into color in the language of images. For instance, the sound of crystals in "The Golden Pot" is communicated through the color spectrum in Bilge Alkor’s visual work. Sound turns into color and is concretized.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alkor, B. (2022) Hoffmann’ın Masalları [Tales of Hoffman], Bilge Alkor Sanat Koleksiyonu Yayınları, Istanbul.
Beauvoir, S. (2021) İkinci Cinsiyet – Olgular Efsaneler [The Second Sex], Çev: Gülnur Acar Savran, KÜY, Istanbul.
Freud, S. (1999) Sanat ve Edebiyat [Art and Literature], “Tekinsiz” [The Uncanny], Çev: Emre Kapkın, Ayşen Tekşen Kapkın, Payel Yayınevi, Istanbul.
Gombrich, E. H. (2004) Sanatın Öyküsü [The Story of Art], Çev: Bedrettin Cömert, Remzi Kitabevi, Istanbul.
Hoffmann, E. (2021) Kum Adam – Seçme Masallar [The Sandman – Selected Tales], Çev: İris Kantemir, İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, Istanbul.
Hoffmann, E. (2004) Matmazel Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudéri], Çev: Esat Nermi Erendor, Say Yayınları, Istanbul.
Öndin, N. (2017) Rönesans ve Simya [Renaissance and Alchemy], Hayalperest Yayınları, Istanbul.
İshak Reyna: Dear Bilge Alkor, we are conducting this interview with you on the occasion of your dual exhibition, which just opened at Ekavart, and their catalogues, Tales of Hoffmann and Tango de la Rose. It's an interesting coincidence that 2022, when the exhibition and catalogues meet their audience, is the 200th anniversary of the death of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), the grand master of the German Romantics, the fantastical, and the uncanny, the last of which Freud also points out—in his article "On the Uncanny", which you also reference in the beginning of the catalogue. So far as I've been able to observe, since your dual Shakespeare exhibition in 1996, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the dialogue you establish "From One Art Form to Another" with the works of master artists of music and literature, such as Shakespeare, Mozart, and Schubert, just as you do here with Hoffmann, has been one of the fundamental elements of your artistic production. So I would like to ask, why Hoffmann this time, and why now? For example, did the thoroughly uncanny Covid-19 pandemic process undergone by humankind and our country play a role in this selection?
Bilge Alkor: Every artist is something of a "gatherer". Besides art books, artworks, memories, photographs, and information, I have also gathered, or collected, curios, stones, toys, and masks. Everything with a story, basically.
During the pandemic, I was shut up in my collectioner's house with everything I'd gathered and the problems brought on by age. The stories of all the objects I had collected were uncanny. And that's what opened up to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s provocative world and grew. Since I couldn't go to my studio, I had to develop a new technique to be able to work from my desk. I further developed the digital technique that I used in my project "Mirror of Angels and Devils" in 2010 and that I dubbed "photo-painting".
İ.R.: Could you elaborate on the process and the memories that brought you to Hoffmann? For example, your husband, the poet Can Alkor, who introduced me to Hoffmann's writings and who is the translator of the verses in the two Shakespeare exhibitions we mentioned above—in our conversations, he has told me that he encountered Hoffmann (and another great German Romantic, Kleist) in the years between childhood and early adolescence in the community center library through "The Doge and the Dogaressa", whose translation by Sabahattin Ali was featured in Three Romantic Stories published as part of the National Education Classics in 1943, and whose new edition was fortunately taken up by Yapı Kredi Publishing. What about you?
B.A.: In the years Can and I lived in Rome, we included E. T. A. Hoffmann’s "Princess Brambilla" in our joint evening reading hour. Perhaps we thought that a story set in Rome would bring us closer to the city. After those years, what Klee said about his trip to Tunisia, that "color possessed him", was true in this case too. Hoffmann's world took me in.