“Avant-garde Cinema and Painting” book met with the readers
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Istanbul Ticaret University Visual Communication Design Department Head Prof. Dr. Rıdvan Şentürk’s book titled “Avant-Garde Cinema and Painting”, which provides a fundamental discussion ground for avant-garde art movements, met with the readers. One of the factors that makes the book valuable is that it was published simultaneously with Kitab-ul Menazır, written 1000 years ago by Ibn al-Haytham, who is considered the father of the science of optics and therefore of visual arts related to optics such as cinema and photography, which was published in Turkish for the first time, as a paired work from the same publishing house.
The book titled “Avant-garde Cinema and Painting” written by Prof. Dr. Rıdvan Şentürk, Head of the Department of Visual Communication Design, Faculty of Communication, Istanbul Ticaret University provides a broad framework about avant-garde cinema movements. Considering the fact that avant-garde cinema discussions have not found enough space in the art circles and communication faculties in our country, the book provides an opportunity to understand avant-garde movements and offers a radical perspective on the qualities of the avant-garde concept.
HAIL TO 1000 YEARS AGO
In his post on social media about the book, Prof. Dr. Şentürk said the following, referring to the book Kitab’ul Menazir (Optics), which was translated from Arabic to Turkish by Uzam Publications for the first time after 1000 years: “How fate weaves its webs! While the people and realities we encounter throughout our lives turn into masks of nothingness and death, rather than models of a free and honorable journey, the two books met in the same time period at Uzam Publishing House.”
AVANT-GARDE IS THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING
In the work titled “Avant-Garde Cinema and Painting”, it is emphasized that the history of cinema, its periods, movements and narrative structures cannot be adequately understood without adequately discussing the avant-garde understandings that are based on the question of what the film, which is a tool, is and how it should be.
In this context, the book examines and discusses examples of impressionist, expressionist, dadaist and surrealist films from the first avant-garde movements that had an impact on the transformation process of mainstream cinema, within the conditions of the period. The book also questions how cinema’s ontological, ethical-aesthetic and epistemological relationship with reality was transformed in the process of development.
After introducing the characteristic features of avant-garde movements, the book includes an article about traditionalism, avant-garde movements and the problem of reality. Following the essay titled “Modernization Process and Romantic Depression Culture”, a general framework for avant-garde movements is presented. An explanation of the current situation is followed by movie reviews. At the end of the book, an article titled “Cinema, Art and Transformation Today” is included.
MASTERPIECE
Ibn al-Haytham, who is considered the father of modern sciences and therefore of cinema, which can be called the art of controlling light, is a Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy scholar who lived in the 10th and 11th centuries and is considered the father of modern optics. Ibn al-Haytham laid the foundations of modern optics with his book Kitab-ul Menazir, which is one of his most important works in the field of optics. Kitab-ul Menazir is among the masterpieces that European scientists interested in optics used until approximately the 17th century. The knowledge Ibn al-Haytham produced as a result of his experiments on the refraction and reflection of rays could not be surpassed for the next 500 years.
