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A Lover of Calligraphy EMİN BARIN

This catalogue has been prepared by Yapı Kredi Cultural Activities, Arts and Publishing, for Yapı Kredi Bankası A.Ş. ,
On the occasion of the exhibition “A Lover of Calligraphy: EMİN BARIN”
Held between 15th February-30th March 2002 at Yapı Kredi Kazım Taşkent Art Gallery
İstanbul

Prof. Önder Küçükerman, From the Line to the Letter: Emin Barın, Re-Joiner of the Golden Links of the Chain, p. 12

A Lover of Calligraphy
EMİN BARIN

Yapı Kredi yayınları: 1608
Project Coordinator: Şennur Şentürk
Consultant: Ferit Edgü
Editor: Selahattin Özpalabıyıklar
Translator: Virginia Taylor Saçlıoğlu
Photographs: Aydın Coşkun
Graphic: Yeşim Balaban
Color Separation: 7 Renk
Print: Promat

ISBN 975-08-0366-3

CONTENTS

Ferit Edgü, A Lover ofCalligraphy, 6

Elif Naci, Allah, Allah', 10

Prof. Önder Küçükerman, From the Line to the Letter: Emin Barın, Re-Joiner of the Golden Links of the Chain, 12

Cenap Yazansoy,Emin Barın and the Thursday Gatherings, 20

Abdullah Taşçı,My Teacher, Emin Barın, 22

Prof. Dr. Bülent Özer,Emin Barın as a Contemporary Artist, 28

M. Savaş Çevik, My Teacher Emin Barın as a Calligrapher, 30

Nurullah Berk,The Music of the Scripts, 36

Prof. İlhami Turan,My Teacher, Emin Barın, in All His Facets, 38

Midhat Sertoğlu, Always on Thursday, 50

İslam Seçen,At the Gulbenkian Museum with Emin Barın, 52

Raffi Portakal,Emin Barın: The Collector, 56

Catalogue,59

Chronology, 156

FROM THE LINE TO THE LETTER: Emin Barın, Re-Joiner of the Golden Links of the Chain

Prof. Önder KÜÇÜKERMAN

My First Class with Emin Barın in 1960

It was 1960, my first day as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. We spent the the morning in the workshop and in the afternoon had our first class in “Calligraphy”. I asked who the teacher was. Emin Barın, they said and added, “He’s a very important person, a real Mensch!”
When we entered the “calligraphy workshop,” which was on the ground floor of the Academy overlooking the Bosphorus, we honestly had no idea just what we were going to learn in this calligraphy class. A middle-aged man at a table in the corner, “Emin Hoca” was eyeing the new students with a benevolent smile. Next to him was his young assistant, İlhami Turan.
The class began. l still remember how Emin Bey started writing the letters A, B and C on the blackboard, repeating them as he wrote. He was explaining how the letters were formed, how they related to one another, how they fit together in general. All of us, who had got into the Academy after passing the very difficult examinations, realized within minutes that we knew absolutely nothing about the design of the letters we ourselves used when we wrote, let alone those on the blackboard, and zilch about calligraphy!
In his calm, unassuming way, Emin Hoca was opening our eyes to a brand new world by explaining very clearly and simply the basic principles of handwriting. We were dumbstruck. He gave a short break and then asked us to reproduce the letters he had drawn. Amazing! within a few minutes it was clear that we couldn’t even write the letters properly. Only one person managed to do it. And he had worked previously in advertising!
As we left the class, I realized that I was looking at those around me with a touch of scorn! We after all had begun to learn the rules of the letters of the alphabet!
* * *
Later on everybody started taking an uncanny interest in this calligraphy class. We filled notebook after notebook with our handwriting. And while we thought we had made a little more progress each time, I have to admit that we were always taken aback when we saw the mistakes Emin Hoca found and, ever so gently, corrected. Writing properly without mistakes became a question of honor among us. Without ever letting on, Emin Hoca was teaching us the fundamental rules of communication. Everybody started working harder, writing more, and a sort of friendly rivalry even developed among the students.
In time we came to realize that Emin Bey, while teaching us the Latin characters, was also imparting to us the basic principles of the Ottoman art of calligraphy as well as a knowledge of different civilizations. He used very interesting examples to do so. For instance, he once explained how an old calligrapher “recognized an inscription he had made one Friday afternoon when he saw it forty years later,” because “the flow of his handwriting was disrupted” during the short time he took off for his prayers.
Emin Bey also demonstrated the importance in calligraphy of the relationship between the human hand and eye through using simple and very surprising examples.
In a sentence or two he summed up the importance of the geometries created by the arm, elbow, hand and finger movements while writing, and its connection with the shape of the letters. It was something we had never realized before.
When he pointed out in a single sentence, as if it wasn’t important at all, the distortions that occur in inscriptions on large surfaces, or the main plastic lines of an inscription in three dimensions, the relationship between writing on the one hand and humans and space on the other became instantly clear to us.
In short, Emin Bey took pleasure in leading us, like an experienced guide, through the complex world of writing. The interesting thing about it was that he always acted as if he was telling us something very simple and familiar.
We came to realize much later that in an art school like the Fine Arts Academy this intriguing approach was due entirely to Emin Bey’s expertise and remarkable personality. He was friends with his colleagues, his students, and everybody, whether he knew them or not. One day he would attend the Academy ball with his colleagues in a grey tuxedo, the next day in class he would pick up a hundred-year-old pencil and explain how to sharpen and use it. He was on “intimate terms with both the modern west and the traditional east”.
Keeping abreast of new currents in art was an important subject for Academy students. Emin Bey made a profound impression on us by showing us how, quite effortlessly, to find connections between even a colorful subject like this and the world of calligraphy.

Learning the Latin Script in Germany
Emin Barın was a firm believer in friendship between teachers and students, in a way that bound all of us closely to him. It was only as we got to know him better that we came to learn about his many accomplishments which he so modestly kept to himself. We heard about his studies in Germany, the important inscriptions he had written, the prize-winning project he had undertaken for the Olympics, and the major collection he had gradually put together. He had also written important inscriptions such as Ataturk’s address to the youth of Turkey. In short, Emin Bey had analyzed the Latin characters with academic precision, employing them in the most significant places.
As his students at the Academy, we had finally come to realize after two years that handwriting was an area of design requiring basic knowledge and creativity. But perhaps the more interesting part of it was that what we had learned was not merely the Latin letters. Through the masterful examples ne so quietly gave us, we had not only gleaned a hint of what is required for writing correctly and fluently but also grasped that handwriting is a vehicle of civilization.

The Thursday Gatherings at His Workshop
We heard in those years that Emin Bey had a calligraphy and bookbinding workshop and that “scholarly figures” with an interest in these ancient arts gathered there every Thursday. We also knew that as students it was of course out of the question for us to take part in those meetings.
Quick frankly, I for my own part was extremely curious about those Thursday gatherings. Only in 1965, when I was an assistant and went to Emin Bey for some information, did he invite me there saying I would find the answer to my question “at the Thursday meeting”.
When I stepped inside, all the important names of the day interested in the subject were sitting side by side, discussing things such as an inscription by an old calligraphic master, or the binding on an old book. One by one they would each examine the work carefully and then hand it on to the next person with a pithy comment that, to us, was almost like a code.
I asked how I could get information about the Ottoman “Ehl-i Hiref” or master craftsmen in the period of the Topkapı Palace. I noticed that one of those venerable personages, whose name I cannot remember, peered over his spectacles at Emin Bey as if to say, “Who is this young man anyway?” And when Emin Bey tilted his head slightly as if to say, “One of us...”, I began to catch on.
I was astonished, because what had been conveyed there in one fell swoop I had never heard or read about anywhere else. These people were explaining it live, like actors in a film. How could I have known that they, each and every one of them, were none other than the “Ehl-i Hiref’?
It was then I realized that Emin Bey wanted to perpetuate an ancient and very important legacy of traditional design and creativity that was being slowly buried in the depths of history and, by bringing the last masters together, was trying to keep a small “chorus” going and thereby create an impact far beyond what ne could do as a single individual.
In conclusion, the Thursday gatherings at Emin Bey’s workshop can certainly be said to have been a motivating factor in the creation or development of a number of museums and collections both in Turkey and abroad.

“...Those Familiar with the Old Heritage Are Slowly Declining in Number...”
In later years we also had an opportunity to get to know Emin Hoca’s family... His wife Necla, and his children, Tevfik, Ayşe and Gülperi, and his friends... And what we encountered was a big, happy and harmonious family.
At our cottage in the village of Ağaçlı I saw another side of Emin Bey, a personality friendly to everyone, tolerant and at peace with himself.
One day when we were sitting on the porch, I asked him how he would sum up his career. Every word that he said was like a lesson to me:
“... You see, my son, I am a man who has struggled in Turkey to effect a successful transition to the Latin alphabet. For this reason I studied in Germany, I worked hard, I produced many works and trained many people. Then one day I looked around me and l saw that those who knew the old art of calligraphy were slowly dying out. The funny thing about it is that as their numbers decreased the importance began to emerge of preserving my own knowledge and passing it on to future generations. That is how I first began re-interpreting the old art. My purpose was not to revive the old way of writing but rather to convey a message that would show that the basic principles of a traditional legacy consisting of the art of calligraphy and creativity can also be kept alive in the Latin letters.”

What History Will Write about Emin Barın: “The Man who Creatively Joined the Golden Links of a Broken Chain”
It is abundantly clear that our esteemed teacher, Emin Barın, as he raised the art of calligraphy to new heights in Turkey, was also trying to do things to keep alive the values of an ancient heritage facing extinction. Entirely at his own initiative he did three important things to this end:
First of all, the Thursday meetings at his workshop. By his insistent fanning, he rekindled the ashes of an old and brilliant fire that was beginning to go out. And he was so successful in doing this that the fire has continued to burn at those meetings ever since he died.
Second, with superhuman patience he collected and preserved the most meaningful and choice examples of this ancient heritage, developing for this purpose a collection that also indicates the sources, triumphs and horizons of that heritage. In that sense, this exhibition provides a clue as to how Emin Bey viewed the golden links of that ancient legacy.
Third and last are the products of his own creativity, insofar as he himself, with enormous sensitivity, undertook the task of rescuing an ancient heritage from extinction. Appropriately, these last new creations of his are hung in the Senate Hall of the Fine Arts Academy and Mimar Sinan University, where he taught all his life.
* * *
In sum, our beloved teacher, Emin Barın quietly and self-effacingly discovered new links for an old and very precious chain that was beginning to fail apart and, adding them with the utmost respect, thereby left a legacy of his own.

My dear teacher, may your name live forever...

January 2002