The visual ideology of Turkish painting: 1850-1950

The educational and transformative function of art in societies has caused the ruling power to instrumentalize art in order to determine the ideological level of society throughout history. Art, as one of the main components of social formation, has visualized the ideological level of the period in which it was performed. Nicos Hadjinicolaou states in his book 'Art History and Class Struggle' that the ideological level of the social structure emerges as affirmative or critical visual ideologies of the dominant ideology in the art of painting. With this study, it is aimed to determine the visual ideologies of Turkish painting in line with the theory of Nicos Hadjinicolaou. The effects of the attempts for Westernization in the Ottoman Empire started to expand from the political and administrative sphere to the social structure by the declaration of the Tanzimat. The changes in the social structure with the declaration of the Constitutional Monarchy, caused the emergence of different ideological systems besides the dominant ideologies of the ruling power which were Ottomanism and Westernization. During the Balkan Wars, the ideology of Ottomanism gave way to Turkism ideology. With the Şişli Atelier established during the war years, painting was used as the official propaganda tool of the state for the first time and the war-themed paintings visualized the ideology of the ruling power of the period. With the proclamation of the Republic, the ideology of Westernization was replaced by the ideology of modernization, and the ideology of Turkism was replaced by the ideology of nationalism. The ruling power of the Republic period has made determining the ideological level of the social structure the official policy of the state. In the process of constructing the identity of the nation, the production of painting has given an educational function to society by visualizing the Republic revolutions. From the beginning of canvas painting in the Western sense in Ottoman Empire to the present day, the ideologies existing in the social structure have been visualized in painting. These visualizations emerged as "affirmative visual ideology" in works that were in harmony with the ideology that dominated the social structure during the period of painting production, and "critical visual ideology" in works that were in conflict with the dominant ideology or other forms of ideology existing in the social structure. In this study, with a wide literature review, the ideological level of the social structure in which painting takes place is determined and how this ideological level was visualized in Turkish painting art is examined.