Ottoman History Podcast - Mihri Rasim Between Empire and Nation

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

Episode 378 with Özlem Gülin Dağoğlu hosted by Sam Dolbee and Shireen Hamza Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Many myths have accompanied the life of Mihri Rasim, but few are as interesting as her life itself. Born to a wealthy family in Istanbul in the late Ottoman period, Mihri Rasim became a politically connected painter, living in Italy for several years on her own and then Paris, where she played a key role in the salons of Ottoman dissidents known as the Young Turks. In the wake of the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, she returned to Istanbul, and opened the Fine Arts School for Women in Istanbul, where she went on to teach. After the war, she went to Italy, and then the United States, where she continued her work painting and teaching. In addition to many self-portraits, she also painted various powerful figures, among them Mustafa Kemal, Mussolini, and Thomas Edison. Listen for a discussion of art, gender, and migration in a period of momentous political change. « Click for More »

Hello, and welcome to the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby. And I'm Shirin Hamza. Today we're joined by Dr. Özlem Gülendal, who finished her PhD at University of Montreal in the Department of Art History and Cinematographic Studies last year. Özlem, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the podcast. We'll be speaking about one of the most interesting and also most misunderstood artists of the early 20th century, Mihri Rasim. Born in Istanbul in 1886, she was prominent in the

founding of the School of Fine Arts for Girls there in 1914. After the founding of the Turkish Republic, she painted a famous portrait of Mustafa Kemal, and then she left Turkey and spent much of the rest of her life in the United States. As we discuss her life, we'll discuss how her art intersected and diverged from the politics of the day, and how that has caused her to be so misunderstood. So Özlem, tell us about where Mehri Rasim comes from. What kind of a family was she born to? She comes from a very privileged background. Her father was teaching and he was director of the Imperial Medical School.

And her mother, she was affiliated with the Imperial Ottoman family. So her relations with the Ottoman Imperial family date back to Sultan Abdulaziz and the 1850s and this is how she got to learn the basics of painting because you know at that time in elite families it was very common for young girls and young boys also to learn the basics of the painting and music and learning different European languages such as Italian French and English that she really spoke well, Mie de la Seine by the way. So she learned the basics of painting from her governess as it was common amongst the elite families in Istanbul. She was regularly visiting her family members in Yıldız Palace and at one time she offered her painting a portrait to the Sultan himself. The Sultan

Abdülhamid who really liked and appreciated the portrait referred her to his court painter, Fausto Zonaro, and she studied with him between 1896 and 1907 when she left Istanbul for Rome. So you said that it was pretty common at the time for elite families to educate their children in painting. Typically she's presented as kind of an iconoclast figure. By pursuing painting, was there a point where she sort of crossed the line? She definitely crossed many, many, many lines. Yes, of course, girls were taught basics of painting, but they didn't translate this into being on the painter and being painter who made a living out of you know your art her art she made a living

out of her art she painted for the elite and she worked for the elite and she was of course a member of the elite and and so the nature of of her early paintings what what kinds of things was she focused on? She did many, many portraits of her family members. For instance, her cousin Leila Achbay in her memoir says that she painted all the family members, but that unfortunately there is no painting, no painting of her family members survived. So yeah, we don't know what she did there is a one painting kept at Topkapı Palace Museum archives I think and it's her auto portrait self-portrait Ottoman elites were huge consumers of works of art and most notably portrait painting they They were decorating their houses, like in Europe, actually,

like in Europe at the same time. It was meant to indicate their high social status and it was meant to indicate their genealogy. So Racine painted for the elite, and she came from the elite, but she used her paintings to make a connection, a social connection, like every portrait painter. She showed what she could do. And she kind of used it as an advertisement, if I dare say.

So where we left off in the story. She's leaving to Rome. Okay, so she goes to Rome. We're in 1907, around 1907, and she's leaving to Rome. She left for Rome around 1907 when it was highly difficult for an Ottoman woman to walk alone in Istanbul streets. with the help of Irene Barer, which she was the wife of Camille Barer, the French consul to Rome. So she stayed in Rome and then from Rome she went to Paris and she received the medal from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and in her apartment she gathered the Ottoman intellectuals, prominent painters, writers, and she had a salon in Paris. And so Paris is really a hotbed for organizing at the time among

political activists who had to leave the Ottoman Empire or were exiled in some way. And so are these art worlds and political worlds intersecting in this Salon? In her case, yes, of course, because she was a young Turk painter. So in Paris, when she was in Paris, she was frequently visiting and she made portraits of young Turks. So of course, this is right before the Committee of Union and Progress is going to come to power in Istanbul in 1908. The constitution is going to be reinstated. Parliament is going to be reinstated.

So this is really on the verge of huge changes. Exactly. And she's at the center of this. Yes, well, she is literally at the center of it, because first of all, she got acquainted with young Turk ideals. She embraced the young Turk ideals, because her father, he was teaching at the medical school, and it was a bastion of young Turks, you know, the young Turks, students who was against the Hamidian regime. They were there.

And who were not all necessarily Turks, right? Exactly. So she was really at a very young age, acquainted and embraced young Turk ideals. And I also use this expression for its double reference. Yes, of course, she supported overtly the young Turks, but also because she was an avant-garde woman, she was highly innovative. So I think it fits perfectly for her.

But in Paris, let me add that she frequented the atelier of Gallipé, who was a Young Turk also. So it's not a random choice to go and study with Gallipé. So she got married in Paris to Mushfik Selami Bey around 1911, and then she went to Istanbul with her husband, and she started teaching at Darul Muallimat, the school for women teachers, female teachers. So she taught there, she taught at Darul Muallimat

between 1912 and 1913. And then... Sorry, what did she teach there? Art, painting and drawing lessons she gave. And in October 1914, she was able to establish the first fine arts academy for women in Istanbul, where she introduced female nude courses, where her students were able to throw in the outdoors.

She, along with Hoca Ali Riza, she took her students to Gulhane Park and close by to Galata Tower, where her students literally defied the restrictions placed on women's bodies, because they were out there painting. They were expressing themselves as painters. The Ottoman art world was exclusively male until she founded the first fine art school for women. until she founded the first fine art school for women. In this period, in this early 20th century moment,

I'm curious about fine art schools elsewhere in the world, if they admitted women, or if this was really a unique opportunity that women in Istanbul had. No, of course women started gaining access to fine art schools, for instance, in Paris. But in France, they had to wait three centuries. In Istanbul, it's only 31 years. Everything is relative, of course. But because the, Sana'in, if you said, the men's academy opened in 1883 and Women's Academy opened in 1914, so it's only 31 years, but still. The question I'm wondering is that why they didn't allow women into Men's Academy and they created a separate school for women? I mean, you said this was such a profound challenge that she was leading in some ways by occupying public space and producing art. Was there pushback to it?

Yes, there were. For instance, she asked for the permission to use ancient sculptures, you know, to allow her, to give her students the opportunity to draw male figures. Because, of course, they had access to naked women. Her students went and fetched from the hammams mostly Russian women who came to sit at the school, but men, new models, they couldn't really. So she asked for ancient sculptures, but this was highly problematic for conservatives. And an inspector from the education minister called her in and asked,

why are you allowing your students to draw naked men? And with the as she was, she answered she answered well the first things first uh loincloth is covering what my decent ladies of the academy should not see even though malik axel the painter malik axel writes that she never covered anything and second she said well, those sculptures are not more or less naked than the Pelivan, the combating bare torso. So the inspector found her answers quite convenient, quite okay and acceptable. And her students continued to use ancient sculptures. I just love this comparison between ancient Greek or Roman art. Do you know which period it was from?

Well, the sculptures came from the Imperial Archaeology Museum. Okay. And of course, implicitly, by using those sculptures, the Academy kind of associated itself with the European artistic genealogy. To compare that to Pehlavan, to the traditional wrestler, it's a really interesting comparison. I guess it's one that they couldn't really object to. It's part of the Ottoman tradition know, she was really whippy.

Very clever. This school is established in 1914, which is an important year all around the world as the beginning of World War I. What happens with the school in the midst of this conflict that resulted in so many tragedies all around the world and in the Ottoman Empire? Does art continue? Does art education continue? It continued, but they changed locations from one building to another because buildings were obviously used for army purposes. So it's from one building to another, but the education continued for a woman. They organized their first exhibition in 1916 where they showed nude female portraits. And do we have a sense of the public reception of that?

No, we don't, because my educated guess is that only their family, the students' family, came to see and came to visit the exhibition. It wasn't open to the public. So who were these students who were exhibiting work in this exhibition? How have you been able to learn more about their lives as well? It was pretty, the resources on the academy are pretty scarce and there are many, many holes to fill in. But for the students, I can name, of course, a few. Nazla Ecevit, for instance, Bülent Ecevit's mother. Fahre

Elisa Zeyid, Melkis Mustafa Sabian, Bozcela, Güzin Duran. All of these women were students at the Academy, but most of them did not pursue a North career. After they graduated from İnaz Sanayi Nefis-i Mektebe, they chose to follow their husbands. For instance, the case of Güzin Duran is quite interesting. When the artist Canan Bekal, made an interview with her in the 80s, she thought Beykal came to talk with Güzin Duran about her husband, Feyhaman Duran, and Beykal was like, no, no, I came to talk to you about your art. So she never really considered herself as an artist, but her husband, she was following Nazla Ecevit. She didn't pursue her career.

She kind of raised her kids. Many years after that, she chose to pursue her artistic career. Same thing for Fr. Elisa Zeid. She kind of followed her husband and then, you know, gradually became an artist. So not all the women, all Miry Rasim students were directly, you know, studied and have a diploma. And yes, we are artists. So it's interesting to think about this constellation of students who came through this school and some of whom went back to art later in life.

What's happening with Mehri Rasim's own art through these years? Sure, she continued to paint portraits for the elite in Istanbul, in Rome and in Paris, in every city she was living. She was making connections through her social status and she was painting the portraits of the elites she was a yeah after the first world war when the ottoman empire capitulated many of her supporters many of her young turk supporters were in prison and she really got scared for her own security and her own life and she left again in a hurry i should say for rome this is her second rome visit and then she came back in istanbul after a short while and continued to teach at

the women's academy from between 1920 and 1922 and in 1922 with her husband they decided to leave for europe and got divorced there eventually. So So this far we've talked about how in a lot of ways she made her living by drawing the portraits of others and using that with great skill to move in life. But she also drew a number of self-portraits. Could you tell us a little bit about those and what's interesting about them? portraits. Could you tell us a little bit about those and what's interesting about them? Of course, with pleasure. Apart from her one self-portrait that is kept at the Topkapi Musée C, Archive L'Ere, Topkapi Museum archives, all her self-portraits are veiled. She always represented herself with her veil on, even for the portraits she made in Europe or in the United States. But the thing is that she wasn't crushed by the symbolic weight of her veil. She used it as she wanted to, as she was pleased to.

When we look, for instance, at her portrait, at her self-portrait, she is wearing the veil, the Ottoman veil. So she is playing with what the viewer could and would see in her self-portraits. See, she's always in control in her self-portraits. She has the power and she's not letting you define her. She knows what she wants and this is it. Ermir Rasim really knew what she wanted from life and she really pursued two main goals. She wanted to improve women's life.

She wanted to give women more agency in every country she lived in, be it in Ottoman Empire, in Turkey, in European countries and in the United States. And she wanted to be considered, in her own words, I'm quoting her, among the talented people so yeah she she she was quite a smart woman i mean she is looking directly at you and you have no way of escaping her she's telling you i am here the artist is present so what's interesting about how

you describe her in in these self-portraits is that she's so in control. And one of the things that's striking about the Turkish Republic at this time is that in a lot of ways, they use women's rights as a way of differentiating with the Ottoman period. She is an ambiguous artist. She also with the new Turkish Republic tried to make connection with the Kemalists. She offered, she was invited to Çankaya, she offered Mustafa Kemal himself his portrait but she didn't quite fit into their agenda as well because she represented Ottoman aristocracy even though they recycled some Ottoman aristocrats into their diplomacy,

she represented most notably pre-Republican feminism, which of course couldn't exist. So she wasn't that useful for this new regime that's claiming to create a break from the past. And maybe, I'm not sure if these are the words we'd want to use, but she represented progress before the Turkish Republic. Exactly. But the Turkish Republic wanted to offer Turkish women emancipation. But as we know now, the women claimed and obtained the rights, basic rights. They demanded rights to, for instance, attend university classes. They obtained it. She demanded, Miryasim demanded, Fine Arts Academy. She obtained it. So she left to Europe with her husband, Mushfik Selamibe. They traveled a bit in Europe, and around 1922, 1923, they

divorced. Mushfik Selamibe returned to Istanbul. Mirasim stayed there. And she lived on and off in Italy, where she was acquainted with certain fascist milieus. She made the portraits of Gabriele Tannonzio, Benito Mussolini. Wow. Yes. In 1924, she went back to Turkey. She went to Çankaya, offered Kemal his portrait.

And then after, she never, ever returned to Turkey. In 1927, she chose to live in the United States. And it was already difficult. We think it's difficult right now, but it was already difficult in the 1920s to immigrate into the U.S. And she chose to immigrate to the US in 1927. So the legend wants that she was a marginal artist. She was a bohemian artist who, you know, kind of suffered her own ambition.

And she tragically died in New York. But that's not true. That's really not true. died in New York. But that's not true. That's really not true. I mean, she was friends and with the most renowned people amongst them, Eleanor Roosevelt. She wasn't miserable. Yeah, this story that you're gesturing to about how she's known and how she's famous, it's really striking after hearing this history of her life in which she is born into an elite family and studies painting and music from such a young age. And that's not to diminish the innovative and, as you say, avant-garde position that she's had. But

I'm very curious about how her, you know, her status as a promoter of women's rights, as a very stylistically interesting painter, how this carried over into her new settings in New York? Well, let's start with the beginning. In New York, she arrived in New York in 27. She left to Chicago and then came back to New York, organized an exhibition. It's in 28. It's the first exhibition that a Turkish woman organized in New York, the Turkish female painter organized in New York. Where was it? It was at the Georges de Mazirov Art Gallery, a Russian aristocrat's art gallery. So you see, she always kept her connections.

How did she make these connections with everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Mussolini to Ataturk? Like, where? I mean, I mean. What's the secret? I didn't name Paul von Hindenburg, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison. Yeah. Yeah, the first exhibition.

Of course, she exhibited her most interesting works, the names I just mentioned. And the legend wants that she was after that, oh, so poor and so marginalized. Well, of course, in the 1930s, she had very difficult times. But I think that even Rockefeller thought that it was difficult times in 1930s. It was, she was in New York as an immigrant woman, artist, working, trying to make a living and it was just after the economic crash that devastated the whole world. So yes, it was difficult times for Mihri Rasim too but afterward she did well. She lived around the Central Park in very high-end locations. I found her exact address and even her phone numbers.

That's very interesting. In New York's phone books, she changes sometimes her name. She becomes Mihri Rasim or Mihri Durasim Pasha. She really uses her social status. So here's an art question. Sure. I don't know much about art. That's also a confession.

Is portraiture, is that sort of an evergreen kind of art? Are rich and powerful people always wanting portraits to be done? Because it seems to me that the 20s and the 30s are times where I think of Cub the 30s are times where I think of Cubism. It's times where I think of the Turkish state sending artists out to the villages to paint the peasants. And it seems like, in a way, Miri Rasim is painting the counter-revolution. I'm not sure if that's the word we want to use. Again, I understand what you mean. Miri Rasim was an avant-garde woman by her lifestyle,

but her art was not that much avant-garde. She was a portrait painter, and portraiture is used to assert one's power. She liked power, and she had power, and she drew power. She was drawn to powerful men. Wilson, Roosevelt, Edison, era-defining men. But it's interesting because it's subversive too, right? And men, it's men, not women. She's playing along with their need to have

this portrait that projects their power, and then she's using that for her own power, right? Exactly, exactly. Her words describe her perfectly. She wanted to be considered amongst the talented people. That's what she wanted. And her art was a means to obtain it. And she did it. Just thinking about the art scene in New York at this time, the first thing that comes to mind is the Harlem Renaissance. I'm just curious if she bumped shoulders with any of those amazing artists. curious if she bumped shoulders with any of those amazing artists. She was teaching in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance so she was there she was in the middle of it. What? She was yeah exactly. During the Harlem Renaissance in Harlem I mean how close can you get to that? Did she comment at all on the kind

of artistic and political movement? She was very involved politically. She, for instance, was involved with the League of Women Voters that counted Eleanor Roosevelt as its member. She frequented Mary and Catherine Dreyer, the Dreyer sisters. She was acquainted with Frances Keller, a social activist. So she was really working for a women's right. And for instance, she gave a lecture in 1938 at the Wellington Hotel about the emancipation of Turkish women. Newspaper articles were published about her from the smallest city in Iowa to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to big publishers like Washington Post, New York Times. She was really

a prolific and prominent painter, not a tragically marginalized and powerless, miserable painter. So you've talked a little bit about this myth of her being marginalized and poor. And we have a sense of how you're arguing against that. But I wonder if you could talk about the ways she's been remembered. I mean, surely that's one way she's been remembered, but how have different political projects tried to enlist her? Why is she such an attractive figure, even though we know so little about her? Or is it because we know so little about her? Out of the few information we had on her, a fable, a legend was created. A legend that yes, she tried so hard but then she finished quite badly. This legend was created in the 80s in Turkey where feminism was coming up, where

feminism was questioning and criticizing the Republican modernization project, where they were asking questions about the liberation of women. And it's very interesting that it's at the very same time that this legend of Mihri Rasim, a woman who did well, who did it, was undermined and tried to be diminished. You know, her major contributions to art history and to the advancement and the improvement of women's conditions. So I'm curious how it is that her story was unattractive to the feminists. It is fascinating because even feminist art historians

recycled that story, recycled that legend. They were trying to prove that, well, yes, she tried and she tried so hard, but unfortunately she didn't succeed. But by doing so, they were just, you know, contributing to the legend. Right. So their version of the story is that we need to fight because even the people, you know, got the furthest weren't able to make it. And kind of anybody who made it, not even in the Republican era, but before the Republican era, was unacceptable to their activist goals. Is that why? In part, in part, it could explain her absence from historiography. But also we should mention that women artists who worked before the 1950s

are highly absent from historiography. It's not only Mihri Rasim's case. I mean, yes, Mihri Rasim is an important case, and the other women are very important too. But I mean, still to date date women artists who worked and lived before the 1950s are major absentees from historiography. The work on Mihri Rasim you know why it's so interesting and so pertinent because right now we are in the midst I mean worldwide globally in the midst of you know

identity questions and immigration and she's kind of you know in the midst of identity questions and immigration. And she's kind of in the middle of it. We've talked a lot about the legends associated with Mihri Rasim, and I think you've shown us how, in many ways, reality was more interesting than the legend. Thank you so much for joining us, Özlem. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. What a pleasure. We'll have a bibliography on our website, OttomanHistoryPodcast.com, as well as suggestions

for related podcasts on questions of visual sources and also gender. We also encourage you to join us on Facebook, where we have over 30,000 followers. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. Until next time, take care. Thank you.