94. Today in 1920s Turkey. Cartoonist Portraits and Profiles: İsmail Hakkı Bey
Today we will be looking at the second artist in a seven-part series on Turkish cartoonists of the 1920s. The inspiration for this line-up of brief biographies came from a cartoon featuring all of the artists on the roster of the prominent magazine, Akbaba.
As such, we will be moving from right to left, one post at a time, exploring the lives, accomplishments, and oeuvres of these illustrators. Following the last post about Ramiz Bey, this next one considers the second figure in the group portrait, İsmail Hakkı Bey (second from right).
İsmail Hakkı Bey did not go on to become as prolific an artist as our first example, Ramiz Bey, so finding information about him was substantially less fruitful. 1920s Turkey has also never posted any of his works, as they are few and far between. Thus, having no prior experience with his art, I turned to my trusted source on Turkish cartoonists: Şefik Memiş and İbrahim Yarış’s book, İstanbul’un 100 Karikatüristi (or “Istanbul’s 100 Cartoonists”). The opening line in their entry for İsmail Hakkı: “There is not a lot of information on his life.” (“Hayatı hakkında fazla bilgi yoktur.”) The brief entry proceeds to say that, in addition to Akbaba he worked for the journals Zümrüd-ü Anka and Aydede; he was especially active 1923–25.
True to their words, there are few readily available clues to this artist’s life but at the very least I was able to find additional works signed by him, especially with the help of Memiş and Yarış’s book, which happened to feature a sample cartoon that included the artist’s signature (p. 27). What would we do without artist signatures?
I began my search for sample works by this artist by perusing the earliest issues of Akbaba from 1923, when Hakkı Bey was most active. It turns out that his greatest contribution to Akbaba was in the field of its branding! Indeed, the singular, familiar masthead featured on the cover of every single issue of the magazine from 8 January 1923 to 1 December 1924 (nos. 10–208) bears the recognizable signature of our İsmail Hakkı Bey! Below is the masthead in question.
The masthead, which is located at the top of the front page of periodicals, usually includes the name of the publication as well as imagery that pertains to its brand or content. In this case, the word “Akbaba” or آق بابا at the center is flanked by two things referred to as akbaba, a vulture and a white-bearded old man. İsmail Hakkı’s signature, which resembles a painter’s palette with a brush sticking through it, can be found on the arm of the old man who is depicted reading a copy of the paper. If all of this feels meta, that’s because it is.
Our mysterious artist’s signature also graces the masthead of another satirical journal: Zümrüd-ü Anka. The magazine used this particular design for over 200 issues, from 11 January 1923 until 8 January 1925 (nos. 1–209). Below is an example of that masthead.
The journal’s namesake, a phoenix (Zümrüd-ü “Anka”) can be seen here flying above the Istanbul skyline. The artist’s signature is to the left of the Princess Tower (Kızkulesi), located to the left of the text. Both mastheads consist of the reflective waters of the Bosporus in the foreground with minaret- and dome-decked skylines of the city serving as the backdrop for the journals’ names. In this way, these mastheads locate these publications in the scenic and perhaps mythical or romantic city of Istanbul.
Searching the pages of Akbaba in the same year as the original group portrait revealed works by the artist, such as this one, which bears both the signature and self-portrait of İsmail Hakkı Bey.
This particular issue of Akbaba featured a cartoon on its back page that showed a number of portraits clearly meant to be distinguishable from one another as “internally” recognizable people. Indeed, the title above the compositions identifies this as “Impressions from Akbaba’s tea party/feast” (Akbaba’nın çay ziyafeti intibalarından), which means we are looking at another visual ensemble of the magazine’s writers and staff — a promising place to seek out more artist portraits.
And here we have the dual bonus find of two links to İsmail Hakkı Bey: his signature and self-portrait. He is the person marked with the number 11 identified as “Ressam (Artist) Hakkı Bey” in the text-block below, which lists the names of everyone in the picture. His portrait is the one closest to the signature, located in the lower left area.
Although there is little known information about this artist right now, we know that İsmail Hakkı was responsible for the most iconic mastheads of two of very popular satirical gazettes of 1920s-Turkey. We know what his signature looked like, and we have several examples of his portrait. Further research could reveal the scope of his oeuvre and important biographical details.
Other sources consulted:
Memiş, Şefik and İbrahim Yarış. “İsmail Hakkı.” In: İstanbul’un 100 Karikatüristi, 27. İstanbul: İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür A.Ş. Yayınları, 2010.
Originally published at https://steemit.com on June 23, 2017.
