The story of modernization in Turkish painting

'Bare, Naked, Nude,' a new exhibition recently opened at Istanbul's Pera Museum, includes academic studies of 44 artists from different periods Istanbul's Pera Museum is presenting a new exhibition titled "Bare, Naked, Nude: A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting" which sheds light upon the development of nude painting in the modernization period of Turkish art

The exhibition explores how art production during a timeline extending from the Ottoman Empire to the modern republic and dominated by landscapes and still-lifes made room for the emergence of the nude, a fundamental genre in art history, as a pictorial form and theme.

It also brings to the fore the idea that nude painting is symbolic in revealing how the process of modernization in Turkey is reflected in art.

Curated by Ahu Antmen, the exhibition includes nearly 150 works, including academic studies by 44 artists from different periods. 

"Bare, Naked, Nude" follows the footsteps of nude paintings produced secretly at the turn of the 20th century and copiously during the republican era and seeks to demonstrate artists' efforts to overcome a cultural resistance against artistic representations of nudity. 

Noting the subject of nudity was a rather complex concept which not only encompassed historical and social processes including various transformations from tradition to modern, but personal sensitivities as well, Antmen said, "While addressing the development period of nude painting in Turkish art with this exhibition, we also aim to reflect upon the creation of the artist's identity in Turkey in a period extending from the Ottoman Empire to the republic. The challenge of creating a desexualized artistic perception about the female body culturally...