FORMALISM AND THE ACADEMIC FOUNDATION OF TURKISH ART IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

This chapter investigates the ideological and methodological principles that formed the academic conceptualization of Turkish Art by the Viennese scholars Josef Strzygowski, Heinrich Gluck, and Ernst Diez and the direct contributions of these scholars to the teaching of the subject in the universities of Istanbul (Faculty of Literature) and Ankara (Faculty of Language, History, and Geography). The causality of formalism and its ideological extensions are, of course, limited neither to these individuals, who established an art-historical umbilical cord between Austria and Turkey, nor to the particular university departments and faculties in which their legacy was sustained. The chapter sheds light on one particular aspect of a much larger topic by means of a case study on the workings of a methodologically driven vision of Turkish Art in the first half of the twentieth century. Keywords: academic conceptualization; Ankara; Austria; formalism; Istanbul; Turkish Art; twentieth century; Viennese scholars