Not an Art Critic: July 2011

While in Istanbul-Electricity Museum

Photo by Tim Kent

This is the kind of niftiness you can see at the Electricity Museum. All of these large machines were kept from the old power plant. In use from 1914 until 1983, a young business man convinced the government after it closed to split the plant into an art museum on one side, with the power plant museum on the other. Santral means power in Turkish, and does not designate its relation to the city center; the Santral Istanbul opened in 2004.

Photo by Tim Kent

If you don't speak Turkish then what little is explained will be incomprehensible as it is not translated. But it really does not matter. The museum is an opportunity to see mammoth machines that generated enough power to keep a city going. If you know something about electricity then seeing these behemoths is fantastic, and if you did not care for this portion of science class then just enjoy wandering around an old plant and playing with nobs, staring in wonder.

While in Istanbul-Hagia Sophia

Photo by Tim Kent

From the date of its dedication in 360 until 1453, Saint Sophia served as the Greek Patriarchal Cathedral of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted to a Roman Catholic cathedral. The building was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931, when it was secularized and opened as a museum in 1935. In Turkish it is known as the Aya Sophia, which is where we get our mispronunciation of Hagia Sophia.

The first room reveals the age and amount of work needed to restore the place. Of course because the museum intends to show both Christian and Islamic cultures present in the building, it can not completely "restore" as that would remove much of that influence.

The court that leads into the main room has the famous Imperial Gate Mosaic (the first picture) through which only the Sultan and family could enter. The rest of the room is decorated by some amazing pink marble that was sliced on site and placed next to itself to create beautiful symmetry. The marble is astounding and worth enjoying for its own abstract expressionism.

Photo by Tim Kent

The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed and many of the imagery was plastered because Islam bans representational imagery. The archangels above were hidden and are slowly being revealed through the restoration work that my guide informed me is largely done by graduate students. The mihrab (what appears as the gold altar below), minbar (the gold stairs on the right of the mihrab), and four minarets were added in 1453 when Sultan Mehmed II conquered the city.

The last picture is taken from the second story which one gets to by walking up a ramp, the same ramp used by the donkeys to carry the marble to decorate and build that height.

Photo by Tim Kent

While in Istanbul-The Blue Mosque

photo by Tim Kent

The Blue Mosque is also known as Sultan Ahmet for the sultan who had it built in 1606. It continues as an active mosque, with people coming to pray when called as well as throughout the day. Though a tourist site, it closes to tourists during prayer times.

Photo by Tim Kent

This was the first imperial mosque to be built and caused great consternation as Sultan Ahmed I withdrew the funds from the treasury. His predecessors paid for mosques through the gains of war and battles, but Sultan Ahmed I had won no such victories.

Nevertheless the mosque commissioned more than 20,000 handmade ceramic tiles, made at Iznik, in more than fifty different tulip designs. The price for each tile was determined by the Sultan (unsurprisingly) and as tile prices increased the quality of the tiles used in the building decreased. Apparently, the colors have faded but I did not notice.

Photo by Tim Kent


Photo by Tim Kent

I can't really avoid mentioning the minarets.There are six of them where usually there are simply four. This was considered slightly scandalous as it competed with a mosque at Mecca. Sultan Ahmet I solved this by having another one built at Mecca. Ah to be a Sultan!

While in Istanbul-Topkapi

Topkapi Palace was the home of the Sultans from 1465 until 1856 when Dolmebaçe became the official residence. The Palace was built by Sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Constantinople, but the original structures were added to by subsequent Sultans. At its height it held 4000 people, and its kitchens are the origin of Turkish cuisine for which I am particularly grateful.

Visiting Topkapi includes walking through its impressive courtyard, viewing the distinguished buildings and rooms but particularly admiring its many artifacts, including ornate robes of the Sultans across the centuries, the porcelain, the jewels, the Sultan's bed (larger than king size), while imagining the culture and army that sustained this dynasty for 600 years.

Among these many delights, it was the tile in the Circumcision room (also known as the Summer study) that I enjoyed. The room was open, airy, had a wonderful view of the Bospherus and if I did not think about the surgical procedure at least by name once practiced there, then I could imagine my self happily ensconced in that room above all others. The tile work is phenomenal and so I share some of the pictures taken here.

Many of the tiles were moved from other parts of the palace built by Sultan Suleiman I, to honor his greatness–and presumably lineage.

These large panels, influenced by far Eastern ceramics, are considered some of the most important tile work in the room and, possibly, even the palace. They date from 1529 and are remarkable in size and beauty.

While in Istanbul-Ruins

Modern Istanbul stretches nearly 200 miles across, with many neighborhoods and traffic that can make getting from anywhere in the city center to home take up to two hours. The Old City encompasses the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi, and Roman ruins.

Outside the Mosaic Museum is this marble lion still visible across the wear of time. On the other side of him is another, more worn but visible as a lion only through relation with this one.

The Old City is surrounded by a protecting wall that continues to be a part of the building life of that portion of the city.

Near the Cistern is the landmark imposed by the Romans that is the zero point of Istanbul from which they could measure distance to similar posts in other places. The Romans truly modernized the world!

While in Istanbul-Mosques

Though cathedrals are obvious works of art, and admired as such, for reasons mostly having to do with narrow-mindedness, I had not been prepared to admire the mosques of Istanbul as such. Next June when I return, I hope to take additional pictures of the more than 3000 mosques in Istanbul.

There are so many mosques, that adhan (prayer call, but literally meaning permit+ear) overlap and seemingly compete with one another during the five times of the day when devout Muslims must commune with God, mandatory prayers known as fard salah. The minarets served a very practical function before loudspeakers by providing the muezzin a high place from which to chant the invitation to prayer, and then the second call, iqama, which instructs muslims to prepare to pray. The interval time allows those praying to clean their hands and face at fountains found outside each mosque.

Arabic is the official liturgical language in Turkey. As a part of the secularization of Turkey under Ataturk, Arabic was removed at prayer but reinstated in 1950. The Turkish language is full of many international 20th century words precisely because the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 provided a platform for secularization that embraced words and ways of the Western world.

Of course the most famous mosque in Istanbul is the Blue Mosque, directly across from the Saint Sofia museum which was once a basilica and then a mosque before being turned into a public cultural space by Ataturk. More on both of those another time.

While in Istanbul-The Mosaic Museum

Behind the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, otherwise known as the Blue Mosque, is a small, undistinguished but charming little museum of mosaics found in a the pavement of a peristyle court of the Byzantine period. It is at the end of the Arasta Bazaar, discovered during excavations of the area in 1935-1938 and 1951-1954. The archeologists were originally from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, but by the 1980s, Germans and Austrians had also become involved so that this museum is a good example of cultural diplomacy at work.

The museum only shows the mosaic of this one court which is so large that it spanned three rooms, of which one is shown below from the museum site. Above are detailed scenes that show a certain lack of narrative cohesion in the mosaic, though display varied country farm scenes. As an interesting random note, in the one on the left, there is an arch which hopes for perspective but does not quite attain it–as how could it, having been designed in the 6th century AD.

The detail scenes are quite charming. They are self-sufficient little moments that made me smile.

There are so many more to show, but the highlight for me was the monkey trying to get fruit.

Lastly, I had no idea that the colors of mosaics could be so varied, permitting a subtlety in the visual effect. It can not be seen at a distance but a close-up shows how many variants on a hue were used to produce a bright effect. Originally the colors would have been so bright, polished and cared for in the court life. They can not be polished or wet now to show their vividness simply because they are antiques and precious as is. Though that makes perfect sense, I wish it were possible to see these mosaics in all their original splendor.

This museum is not well known by tourists or locals. During the hour that I was there, besides the three employees, I saw two other people. For 8 Turkish Lira it is certainly an experience worth having, and a break from the crowds and heat on an afternoon in the Old City.