Comparative Description Of The Ideological Functions Of Art From The Beginning Of
Twelfth To The End Of Nıneteenth Century -West And The Ottoman Period
Nuray Gümüştekin
1. Introduction
Art is an activity that an object entreated is transformed into something new and is given a
world-view carrying an intentionality. Art is a social phenomenon, and artists are those who
are insubordinate. Art is a social fact. An artist is a necessity for a community, however the
people in the society has the liberty to apprise of the artist on his social duty. Filled with
thoughts and lives of his era, the artist not only expresses the reality, but also pursues the goal
of casting and forming it. Taking into account a society getting corrupted and decayed, the art
is obliged to reflect that corruption, and as long as sticking to its social duty, it has to prove to
the world that it is possible to change, and assist it on this alteration. The explication of the
plastic arts in the West and the Ottoman correlatively may possibly be given by identifying
the cognitive elements for both sides. Our European understanding distinguishes from the
people’s in the West. To us, Europe is the name of the world order, a spesific lifestyle and a
way of thinking, and the whole that will never be undivided, while their European
understanding is a scattered conception in terms of its diverse conditions in time and space, of
its past and present, of its south and north, and of its religion, nation and politics. According
to Europeans, the words we frequently use such as “living just like an European,” “thinking
through an
European-like mind,” or “Europenization” are immensely strange and definitely an
easy way out. And it seems strange to us that they prefer not to see their own similarities, and
always think they’re quite different from each other. The statements such as European art,
European music and European painting that we so readily say just like “European goods,” are
commonly unfamiliar words in the Western languages.
Our painting art, in particular, is tightly and closely associated with the “European”
concept since it has become westernized by changing and revolutionising radically. The most
distinctive characteristics of the European art differently from ours could be seen primarily in
the paintings, in the lifelike human figures. The aim of this article is to try to make a
comparatively explanation in terms of the plastic arts of how the conceptions of both art and
artist in the West and the Ottoman have been changed by depending upon the social
structures, and have constructed and transformed the society from the twelfth-century through
the nineteenth century of the historical period.
2. Art and Ideology in the West and the Ottoman in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries
The Northern sculptors of the twelfth century have worked for the cathedrals, while the
painters have illustrated the manuscripts at that time. It has been strongly placed emphasis by
these artists to the emotional expressions giving meanings to the figures of the images. The
artists of the thirteenth century have not only copied the stereotyped, rigid patterns and
models and transformed them in conjunction with their own purposes, but also passionately
attempted to liven those forms up by not disrespecting the traditional manners of the sacred
expression.