Özdemir Altan, 1931

Özdemir Altan graduated in 1956 from the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a student of Zeki Faik İzer. He returned to the Academy in 1962 as a teaching assistant and remained there as an instructor. He was later awarded a doctorate and became a professor at the school.

Making use of a broad range of colors and different techniques, Özdemir Altan’s “Dog Walking Area Integration Project” resembles a complicated pastiche of a modern city plan in which areas are zoned for different uses and purposes. Its garishly colored areas and the silkscreen-overlaid words and lines (a reference perhaps to mass production) evoke a zoning plan of a modern city. At the top of the painting, to the right, we see the city’s denizens: three very fashionable and expensive-looking dogs that are apparently being walked on a leash by a woman, whose presence is indicated only by a single, sexy-looking lavender leg and red shoe. By including these figures, Altan is showing the city not only as a planned space, but also as a place to live and be seen. The 19th century French critic Charles Baudelaire said that the relationship between observing and being observed walking around is one of the primary requisites of modernity. In the modern world brassy colors, sexy women, and the trappings of wealth (like expensive dog breeds) are widely utilized in adverts. In this respect, Altan’s paintings resemble American Pop Art, which first made extensive use of the modern world’s overpowering imagery.