Visions of Aesthetics and Culture in Yeni Adam (New Man)

This book based on MA thesis of the author aims to examine the construction of art and aesthetic as objects of national identity construction in the early Republican Turkey covers a period between the mid 1930s and the 1940s.The futurist project of early Republican Turkey was based on a utopian republic of fine arts in which the artists had an agenda to serve the needs of the republic. Under the light of this perspective,this study mainly centered on the visual art(painting and sculpture)in Turkey by analysing an important weekly journal ''Yeni Adam''(New Man).Following the state''s building process,discussions on culture, tradition, and ideology were questioned by different groups of intellectuals and state authorities.Among the dominant discourse of the 1930s,Yeni Adam''s critical perspective on art and aesthetic in the concept of nation-state and Westernism went hand in hand with nationalism and modernism.Yeni Adam''s reshaping the Western cultural formation in the Turkish culture opened up a new path for art and aesthetics in which nationalism, social realism,and modernism coexisted.

Autorentext

Born in 1983,Seyda Barlas is a Phd Candidate at Bogaziçi University, Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History.In 2005, she was taken her BA degree at the same univeristy, in the department of History with a certificate in Fine Arts.Her main areas of interest are fine arts, cultural policy,contemporary art,museology,sociology of art.