96. Today in 1920s Turkey. Cartoonist Portraits and Profiles: Hüsamettin Haşim Bey
Hüsamettin Haşim Bey is the fourth artist in our mini series on cartoonists of the 1920s. Post #92, “Cartoonist Portraits and Profiles: Introduction” presented a cartoon portraying all of the cartoonists who contributed to the popular satirical gazette, Akbaba, published in Istanbul.
This is the group portrait that became the basis for this eight-part series dedicated to the lives and oeuvres of each of the artists. Moving from right to left, Today in 1920s Turkey has already considered artists Ramiz Bey, İsmail Hakkı Bey, and Ratip Tahir Bey. Next in line is the artist located squarely at the center of the arrangement, Hüsamettin Haşim Bey.
Like the elusive İsmail Hakkı Bey, information on the life and career of our present artist is scarce. My trusted source on cartoonists of this era, Şefik Memiş and İbrahim Yarış’s İstanbul’un 100 Karikatüristi (Istanbul’s 100 Cartoonists), includes his name and several examples of his work (p. 25). The few words about the artists include a list of the journals of his employment but no biographical information. In addition to Akbaba he worked for Aydede and Zümrüdüanka.
In my own research, I have only seen cartoons by him from the ’20s that date from 1923. Perhaps he dabbled in caricaturing briefly and moved on to pursue a different career. He could have also left the country never to return or could have passed away before developing a substantial corpus of materials. So scarce is his art that Today in 1920s Turkey has never covered any of his works. Moreover, it took quite a bit of searching before I could find a suitable cartoon by Hüsamettin Haşim for this post. Most of his cartoons are portrait caricatures of notable people from Istanbul.
Türkçe: “Darvin” nazariyesinin timsalı.
English: A representation of Darwin’s theory.
After some searching I did happen upon the above cartoon that was signed by our artist (lower left corner). It is appealing because it requires little explanation and demonstrates the prevalence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in Turkey in the 1920s. Here, Hüsamettin Haşim envisions the shared ancestry of humans and other primates as a hybrid human-headed, hairy ape. The head appears to be a portrait and may represent a known personage who is otherwise unrecognizable to me.
Originally published at https://steemit.com on July 20, 2017.
