An aesthetic analysis of the city and space in plastic arts through periodic perspectives

The transformation in European art that began with the Renaissance reflects a mental revolution that moved away from the closed and dogmatic worldview of the Middle Ages, emphasizing humancentered thought, observation-based knowledge, and a rational understanding of nature. In the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, space, proportion, anatomy, and composition are treated within a mathematical order; the representation of the city and architecture is constructed in harmony with the pursuit of ideal beauty. In the Baroque era following that, the calm balance of the Renaissance was dissolved; intense emotionality, dramatic use of light, and the idea of movement came to the forefront; urban spaces and monumental structures transformed into theatrical scenes showcasing the splendor of the church and absolute power. In the 19th century, Romanticism, as a reaction to the mechanized life of the Industrial Revolution and the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment, turned towards the magic of nature, individual emotion, and imaginative freedom; industrial cities, meanwhile, were often depicted with a critical or melancholic tone. Modern art movements that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century reinterpreted the perception of space and the city by separating it from physical reality. Surrealism, based on Freud's theory of the unconscious, conceptualized the city as an irrational universe where dreams, chance, and latent associations converge. Expressionism expressed the pressure that growing metropolises exerted on individuals through distorted forms and intense bursts of color; Futurism, on the other hand, rejected the past and depicted the city as a constantly moving, energetic mechanism by glorifying mechanization and speed. Cubism's multiple perspective approach, on the other hand, has transformed space into a geometric field of thought by breaking down and rearranging objects and architecture. The depiction of cities and spaces in Turkish painting has been shaped by the traces of modernization, identity construction, and cultural transformation processes spanning from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic. During the period beginning with Osman Hamdi Bey, Istanbul's historical fabric was treated as a symbol of the East-West encounter. After the founding of the Republic, the geography of Anatolia and the new capital, Ankara, gained an important place in paintings as the bearers of national ideals. The artists of Group D in the 1930s approached the city with a more analytical approach using cubist solutions. In contemporary art today, names such as Devrim Erbil continue to interpret the urban experience with a contemporary aesthetic by reconstructing the rhythm, historical layers, and visual complexity of Istanbul through abstractions.