Reflections on Namık İsmail’s “Harman” (Threshing) painting

İş Sanat has made another beautiful contribution to our cultural life: it has gifted our city a painting and sculpture museum. The museum has opened in the Bodvi Apartment on İstiklal Avenue, which was formerly used as a bank branch. İş Bankası continues its policy of supporting our cultural and artistic life, which it has maintained since its founding manager Celal Bayar. The transformation of the painting and sculpture collection, which has been accumulating since the 1940s, into a museum is truly commendable.

The museum houses many exceptional works of Turkish painting from various periods that have reached the present day. But among them, there is one work that interests me specifically: Namık İsmail’s “Harman” (Threshing) painting. I watched “Harman” once again with admiration.

I first saw it as a centerfold poster provided by Hayat Mecmuası (Hayat Magazine) in the 1970s. The magazine, which brought color to our magazine life with Şevket Rado’s excellent printing technique and vibrant colors, was famous for its centerfold posters. These posters would decorate the walls of homes. Banks used paintings by famous Turkish artists in their calendars. “Harman” was also used in İş Bankası’s 1973 calendar, along with other works.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HARMAN FOR ME

“Harman” is very important to me. Because my own childhood is in it. When we were taken to our village in the summers, “threshing” was one of the things that interested me the most. And the peaceful sounds of the babbling springs are still hidden somewhere in my mind.

In the Turkey of the 1960s, Neolithic revolution technology was still continuing, at least partially. With a pair of oxen, a sickle, a plow, and a threshing sledge. Thanks to these, people had been feeding themselves for thousands of years. Even now, when I go to the village, my eyes look for the threshing sledges left to their fate here and there, with rows of flint stones lined up underneath them.

Children spinning joyfully on the threshing sledges in the summer heat, the abundance bursting from wheat fields not yet poisoned by artificial fertilizers. Heirloom seeds scattered on the soil for hundreds of years. The wheat bundles brought from the fields, tied tightly, turning into large piles on the threshing floor. Children playing on the piles. The taste of the food brought in buckets, eaten in the shade of the arbor waiting for you at the edge of the threshing floor, etched into your mind.

As the sun loses its effect and evening approaches, it means the most important time has come for the threshing floor. The piles on which the threshing sledge has been turning all day have now turned into a pile of straw and grain. The work is left to the light breeze that will come in the evening cool and the hands that will skillfully use the pitchforks. Thanks to these experienced hands, the wheat grains separated from their straw will accompany the redness of the sunset. The grains will slowly turn into piles as night approaches.

After being dried on the threshing floor for a few days, the wheat, which has fed humanity for thousands of years, first goes into sacks and then into granaries. The threshing floor is a time of joy for children, a laborious task lasting for days for adults, but it is the guarantee of sustaining life in Anatolia.

THE BREAD OF THAT HARMAN

Threshing can last for days, even a week or two. The extension of the duration shows the abundance, the blessing, and the quantity of the crop. The land is the land of the homeland, the seed is the heirloom seed, and the mill is a stone mill built on a nearby stream. The millstones turn with the power of the water, making creaking sounds. It turns the wheat into flour. The oven is a stone oven whose construction date is forgotten by many generations.

The product of that soil, of that threshing floor, is now about to come out of the oven as bread. The first bread to come out is distributed to the children waiting impatiently in front of the oven. For me, this is the meaning of Namık İsmail’s “Harman”: the hot summer sun, human labor, the wheat being separated from its straw as it is winnowed, and the bread.

Namık İsmail’s “Harman” did not last long. I caught the end of it and got to see it. Within ten years, a massive machine called a threshing machine came to the threshing floor. There was no longer any need for hands that skillfully used the pitchfork or to wait for the right wind. Threshing was reduced to half a day. The threshing sledges began to wait sadly in corners with flint stones embedded in their backs.

Nowadays, there is neither a threshing floor nor a threshing machine. Because wheat is no longer planted. Flour comes from the town, and wheat comes from Russia or Ukraine. They say we are making our own wheat into pasta and exporting it as a finished product. That way, we earn more. That’s what they say. Even if the ovens burn from time to time, the bread is not the old bread, and the taste is not the old taste.

NAMIK İSMAİL’S ARTISTRY

Namık İsmail is a name that is special and new in our art history with his artistry and the characteristics of his life. He is one of the most important painters of the Constitutional and Republican periods. He was 45 years old when he passed away at an early age on a Kadıköy ferry in 1935. He lived a full life in his short lifespan. He fit the works we admire today into this time. And other things too.

Namık İsmail had drawn attention with his talent for painting from a very young age and had taken lessons from the most famous teachers of the time. His father, a well-known calligrapher and Tophane treasurer, sent his son, who was struggling with baccalaureate exams at the Galatasaray High School, to France to study painting. From 1911 to 1914, he worked in France’s famous studios and took lessons. The influence of Impressionism is visible in his works from this period. For example, the village house painting that I like very much was made in France in 1911. Our painter could not return to France from Istanbul, where he had returned for a vacation in the summer of 1914. The First World War had broken out, and France was one of the enemy countries. He was conscripted as a reserve officer. He was sent to the Sarıkamış Front. There, he caught typhus, a deadly disease. He recovered from the illness. After being sent to Istanbul for convalescence, he was not sent to the front again. He has a self-portrait he made in those days that reflects his state of convalescence remarkably well.

Upon the instructions of Minister of War Enver Pasha, he joined the Şişli War Painters group. Famous teachers of the Academy of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise) such as Çallı İbrahim, Hikmet Onat, Sami Yetik, and Ali Sami produced many works dealing with the theme of war. Among these is Namık İsmail’s famous painting “The Last Artillery Shell.” In this work, our painter perfectly reflected the army’s unshakable resistance in the defense of the homeland on canvas.

While the war was continuing at full speed on one hand, a group of painters was sent to Berlin with the initiative of Enver Pasha. The goal was to introduce Turkish painters through exhibitions and to increase their artistic skills. Here, Namık İsmail adds a new dimension to his art with new techniques he acquired from German teachers. From then on, his works’ brushstrokes and color choices would evoke Expressionism.

At the root of “Harman” lie the Anatolian production relations that have filtered down from centuries ago. We Turks won our war of independence with the wheat that came out of Namık İsmail’s threshing floor and filled the army’s supply granaries. In my opinion, the dating of the paintings to 1923 points to this.

NAMIK İSMAİL’S SOCIALISM AND PARTY PRESIDENCY

Meanwhile, while the Turkish painters group was in Berlin, very important developments that changed the fate of the world took place. The Great October Revolution took place in Russia, and the Bolsheviks came to power. In Germany, where the left was quite strong and Marxist theorists were present, the expectation of a revolution rose. It was thought that the Bolshevik revolution would spread to all of Europe like an oil stain. German socialists, who felt great closeness to the Bolsheviks, formed the Spartacist movement. The revolutionary movement started by leaders such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Klara Zetkin was suppressed in a bloody manner.

While this process was continuing, there were also students sent to Germany besides the painters in Berlin. Among them, we can count figures we know from the Republican period such as Vedat Nedim Tör, Mehmet Sadık Eti (Sadık Ahi), Naif Atuf (Kansu), and Vehbi Sarıdal. The political chaos in Berlin also deeply affected Namık İsmail. Together, they formed the Turkish Spartacists group. They even published a magazine called “Kurtuluş” (Liberation).

Some of the Turkish Spartacists who stayed in Germany until the Armistice in 1921 decided to cross into Anatolia upon their return. Those who remained in Istanbul joined the Şefik Hüsnü Değmer group and founded the Workers and Peasants Socialist Party of Turkey. Namık İsmail served as the president of this party for a while.

NAMIK İSMAİL AT THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS

Our Republic’s first official state emblem and the 1926 May 1st poster bear Namık İsmail’s signature. He continued to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise School). He also had an administrative experience that was met with praise during the time the Sanayi-i Nefise School was transformed into an Academy. During the period when the Academy began education in the Fındıklı Palace, he established new workshops and served as its director.

TWO INTERESTING NOTES

As I stated at the beginning of the article, Namık İsmail has two “Harman” paintings. One is in the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum, and the other is in the İş Sanat collection. However, a piece of news I encountered in the virtual environment while writing this article surprised me, to be honest. It was said in a news item from 2003 that Namık İsmail’s “Harman” painting was sold at an auction for 155 billion liras. How could this be? The two existing paintings had been in their places for years. So, I thought there must be a third “Harman” sold at the auction. Indeed, there is a third “Harman” painting on the internet. This time, a villager collecting straw with a pitchfork at the edge of the threshing floor appears in the painting. This is the theme of the painting, and the threshing floor is the same threshing floor.

The second interesting point is a sentence in the book titled “Unknown Turks: Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Nationalist Ankara and Daily Life in Anatolia” (Bahçeşehir University, 2011) by Heath W. Lowry. The book is based on the memoirs of American journalist Clarence Streit, who crossed into Anatolia in the winter of 1921 (January-March) and interviewed Mustafa Kemal Pasha in Ankara. From the interview published by Streit in the Public Ledger newspaper, we understand that the meeting took place at the station (in the steering building). What is interesting is that a painting signed by Namık İsmail is mentioned behind TBMM Speaker Mustafa Kemal Pasha. How can this be? The year is 1921. The place is Ankara station. Some of the Turkish Spartacists had crossed into Ankara via İnebolu. Meanwhile, Nazım Hikmet and Vala Nurettin had just reached Ankara and were introduced to Mustafa Kemal Pasha by İsmail Fazıl Pasha (Cebesoy). A question crossed my mind, honestly. Could it be that during these feverish days, the Turkish Spartacist Namık İsmail also found a way to cross into Ankara, met with Mustafa Kemal Pasha, and gifted him a painting?

I will discuss the socialism of Namık İsmail, who lived a completely bourgeois life with his open-top red Lancia sports car he brought from Italy and his yacht he named “Korsan” (Pirate), in another article.