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Great Master of cartoon and Comic in Turkey and
the world
Turhan Selcuk is gone...
1922-2010
Hicabi Demirci / Turkey
Erdogan Karayel /Turkey
An article about Turhan before Dead:
To Understand Turhan is to
Understand the Modern World
YASAR KEMAL
Turhan Selcuk is a man of letters. A poet, 0 novelist, a short story
writer...
A strange statement perhaps, but which for me describes the real Turhan
SeTcuk.
By saying this I do not mean to belittle the art of the caricaturist.
On the contrary; it is an art that can attain the heights of a
Chekhov;
a Katharine Mansfield, a Sait Faik, and even strike the note.
And indeed this is what Turhan Selcuk has achieved.
Is there such a thing as a rating for art, and by
what standard can it be rated? Is it just a question
of individual taste or are there fixed criteria? No doubt
there are criteria, but never really quite clearly defined.
I would choose as a criterion an artist like Chekhov whose
value has been recognized everywhere. And the principal
reason for this choice is the incredible similarity
I find between Chekhov and Turhan Selcuk,
as though they had both drunk from the same source.
what was
Chekhov's innovation? A difficult question to answer briefly,
but we can say that he set a new form for the short story
It was different from anything that had been written before,
not like a story but like a piece of life itself, told in simple straight
forward,
poetic style. This new form was bound to be used after him
and interwoven with new human values, as was also the
unique manner he had of describing the frail flitting
feelings of the human being. The reader would at once think:
why, this is me, that's how I feel, how I think. Imperceptible
psychological contradictions, small joys and pains,
and a thousand other evanescent feelings were
caught by that magic pen.
What Chekhov brought to
literature was the human element, unadulterated and
authentic, only to be found in rough form in the great
epics of old such as no one had ever dreamed of exposing
before, the subtle side of the human being that laughs and
weeps at the same time. And that is what Turhan Selcuk
gives us too: the human being laughing as he weeps.
Turhan Selcuk's art has a richness that emanates from the
simple severity of his drawings and the meticulous polish
he brings to them. What Chekhov did for literature Turhan Selcuk
has intensified and enriched with the potentialities of the graphic arts,
bringing fresh dimensions to poetry and story-telling and
new psycho logical elements to humanity, in short forcing back
the horizon of man's psychology His art is like a mirror set up
against the obscure spots of human nature, delving through
the darkness and illuminating many things in us which we ignored,
and this is just what has been done by Homer,
Cervantes, Dostoievsky and Faulkner.
Turhan Selcuk's path should be followed, I think, in order to
Open up new prospects for our literature which seems
to have been encountering some rough going in recent years.
The same applies to the present problems in the field
of caricature in Turkey And this path is, as I said, a short cut to
man himself.
Perhaps in speaking of Turhan Selcuk I have been too abstract.
This a rust most definitely does not look on nature and men as from
high up in the skies, but is plunged deep in the flow of daily events.
He suffers, rejoices, is stirred to anger, struck with childlike wonder,
derisive, disgusted, maddened, feeling not only for himself but for
all of us, the characteristic of great artists. He speaks 9ut
against oppression and wrong, evil and corruption among men.
His battle is your battle. The world his art depicts for us is a
generous world. He has not imprisoned his heart in one feeling,
one idea, one kind of drawing. His whole being is wide open
to all the world, to its beauty and poetry, its magic charm.
To understand Turhan Selcuk is to understand the modern world.
He stands out in the midst of evil and darkness and points to the
light.
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