IN MEMORIAM: YURDAER ALTINTAŞ Ayşegül İzer

He was a man brimming with terrific energy, endowed with a nimble intelligence, extraordinary thinking ability, determination, intuition and imagination; a researcher, creative, passionate, hard-working personality: Yurdaer Altıntaş. Mischievously sparkling blue eyes that radiated light, hair that flew as he walked, an endless joy, a small-framed yet powerful character who looked at the world through a designer’s eyes – a fierce storm.

From the day I entered the university as an assistant in 1987 until 2019, he played an immense role in my development. He was one of those rare educators who could truly befriend his students while never hesitating to criticise them; the kind who could suddenly wrong-foot you, leave you stunned and make you say, “How on earth did I not think of that?”

An Istanbul gentleman, lover of music, the “teacher, friend, confidant” in whose shadow I almost grew.

That is who Yurdaer Altıntaş was.

Four or five years ago, on yet another summer day, I was in Yahşibey for the Design Workshops when my phone rang. He insisted, “Come, I need to talk to you about something…” I grew uneasy because I knew very well that he hated insisting on anything. I tried to pry it out of him, but to no avail. We made an appointment for two weeks later. We met at Karaköy Lokantası and there I learned about his illness. My eyes filled; I turned them away from him. With his combative and stubborn nature I thought he would overcome this too. And for a while things really did go as I hoped. He spent periods in hospital but never surrendered a single ounce of his cheerfulness or his attachment to life.

In mid-2018 everything changed. Hospital stays grew longer. He began saying, “This is no way to live!” For the first time we all feared that “the master is going to give up treatment.” We avoided talking about the illness or giving advice when we were with him; we tried to stay cheerful because we all knew how much he hated weakness and being pestered. His son Celal managed the entire process with incredible strength and grace.

In his final days the silence that came over him frightened me terribly. I visited the hospital many times, trying to understand what was happening, still convinced he would pull through. In a voice barely above a whisper he said, “How many times have I told you to separate the atelier works and take them to the research centre?” I answered, “Just get out of this hospital and I promise I’ll do it.” It was a Tuesday; I didn’t hug him for fear of infection; we blew kisses from a distance.

Wednesday: unusually quiet. I waited for that cheerful, booming voice. Silently he beckoned me with his hand. We kissed. The process that had lasted several years and that I always believed he would beat ended on Thursday, 25 July 2019. My beloved teacher of 32 years was suddenly gone…

I am in my office at the university; he looks at me, mischievous and smiling, through my favourite black-and-white photograph taken by dear Serdar Tanyeli. I am at home; this time he gazes at me, tired yet still watchful, from the photograph on the cover of his last book…

“Let the narrators of reports, the transmitters of traces and the chroniclers of the age relate that his life story is the very history of the development of graphic design in Turkey; he is the only person I believed until the very end would not die, who I thought would survive with his Polish stubbornness – with endless love and gratitude.” With these words I conclude, and leave you alone with his thoughts and words that I have gathered from his handwritten notes (rarely published elsewhere) and from magazines in his archive:

I try to create posters that are as simple as possible, reflect the subject, are effective, approach the subject with emotion when appropriate, can be easily perceived by the target audience and remain in memory. I stay away from fashion trends, the ordinary possibilities of the computer, and intellectual pretentiousness, producing work that is not “fake” and preserving my own personality. If need be, let my posters not be masterpieces, but let them be honest and truly mine. That is why I see belonging to the older generation as an advantage. I value production not only for the sake of producing posters, but especially so that it may serve as an example for the new generation and for the sake of the

profession itself.

The selection of successful works must be rescued from the “you admire me, I admire you” syndrome. Leaving the choice to a jury, despite all its drawbacks, seems healthier than the current system. Mutual warning among jury members can prevent wrong awards. A jury composed of respected figures from graphic artists and circles close to graphic arts would give both more meaning to the selection and a more serious image to the subject. A draft regulation for the selection committee can be presented for the opinion of all graphic artists. Once the exhibition venue is ready, the jury completes its duty within two days and the exhibition opens. An exhibition that opens with an award ceremony will undoubtedly attract more interest from both the press and the audience. Although I am not a writer by profession, I prepared this article – knowing that some will find me unsympathetic – driven mainly by professional responsibility. The purpose of the article is neither to belittle what has been done nor to criticise those who did it. I know very well what was done, how and through what difficulties. Yet there are many more graphic product exhibitions ahead of us. The aim is to shed light on these exhibitions while also voicing aloud some of the whispers around us.

After the 6th Graphic Products Exhibition

The Graphic Products Exhibitions organised every year by the Graphic Artists Professional Association are Turkey’s most influential and perhaps only graphic exhibition. In 1968 a handful of graphic designers founded an association under the name Graphic Artists Association, but due to the small number of graphic artists and the association’s failure to reach the grassroots, it closed after only two years for lack of interest. Later, in 1979 graphic designers established another association and began organising annual exhibitions that covered the previous year’s graphic designs. Today the association, which has 365 members, opens these exhibitions to all graphic artists in the country, whether members or not. Designers may participate with as many works as they wish. There is no pre-selection; every designer bears responsibility for the quality of his or her own work. A symbolic fee is paid per work. This year’s exhibition was formed by 140 graphic designers with 1,076 works.

10th Graphic Products Exhibition

Behind a French graphic artist stand Chéret, Toulouse-Lautrec, Léger… Behind our young people (if we do not go back before the Republican period) stands only the accumulation whose rough outlines I tried to give above. In short, the youth lack state support, solid education, encouraging awards, conscious industry, publications and exhibitions, and experience passed from generation to generation. Despite all this, the young have reached a certain level – to the point that the works of many of them are on a par with those of their colleagues in other countries, even though, unlike their Western counterparts, they produce work successfully in every branch of graphic arts, not just one. I believe that if economic conditions allowed and efforts were concentrated in a single branch, they would be even more successful. Yet the success of one group of young people is not enough. As in the past, this can only carry Turkish graphic art beyond individual breakthroughs. Some consider Turkish graphic art successful; that is a superficial view. The real issue is to achieve a distinctive Turkish graphic art free from Western imitation. In this, both educators and masters are guilty toward the young. Educators are guilty because they have not guided the young in this direction – I know this closely as someone involved in education. Even today we only show our students Western examples. What possibilities does our culture offer, how can they be used, how can a distinctive Turkish graphic art be born, what needs to be done to convey these to the student – none of this is discussed. Yet many nations have taken their place in the universe in this art by drawing on their own roots. Poland, for example, rose from its folklore to today’s contemporary works. The masters, apart from one or two small examples, have failed to provide the young with exemplary works from which they can benefit. Yes, the masters have prepared the ground for the young in other respects – and that was not as easy as it is thought. But from time to time they have also set the wrong example. Now the task of giving birth to a distinctive Turkish graphic art falls especially to the young. It is very difficult. It cannot simply drop from the sky. Yet since they have produced successful works despite the accumulation behind them, they have the strength. Let them not forget that they too will have to account to the next generation of graphic artists. • Milliyet Sanat 1981, Issue 31

In some countries the development of the poster, a branch of graphic arts, was greatly aided by the film industry. In Turkey, although huge numbers of film posters were produced, the contribution of Turkish theatre was more significant. The theatre posters produced after the 1960s brought a new breath to graphic arts. Theatre posters differed greatly from earlier posters in colour, technique, and especially in form and expression. That is why they quickly attracted widespread interest. One reason my 1964 exhibition – the first Turkish graphic exhibition, covering everything from brochures to stamps, logos to posters – drew attention was that it was the first; the real reason, however, was the theatre posters it contained. Under the leadership of theatre posters created by various graphic artists, the poster in Turkey entered art magazines and exhibition halls. Theatre posters also took the lead in gaining places for Turkish posters in foreign publications, museums and biennials. As interest in posters grew, graphic art itself gradually came to be noticed. The number of young people and audiences who embraced graphic art and wanted to produce in it increased. • Yurdaer Altıntaş, Sanat Çevresi Journal 1987, Issue 109

• Posters, posters, posters… I can summarise my first visit to the Biennale in one word: staggering. To truly savour the posters, digest what you see, go into the details and refresh your feelings, you have to walk through the biennale again and again. Seeing so many successful posters together is quite difficult. On my second visit I was able to tour the exhibition more consciously, more calmly and for longer – yet I still don’t think it was enough. There were no posters that leapt out and astonished to an extraordinary degree; almost all were successful to more or less the same level. That may be one reason it was hard to view them: you could hardly pass by any work after a short glance. The Japanese posters were perhaps the most vivid and contemporary in the exhibition. In reaching that judgement I must also note the effect of there being more Japanese posters than any other. The graphic designers who made best use of technical possibilities were again the Japanese. The print quality of Japanese posters was outstanding. Quality printing also played a role in drawing attention to certain Japanese works that used metallic foil. Worth mentioning too is the interesting embossed series of Japanese posters for a Swiss watch, created by repeating the same composition in different colours. After Japan, the country with the most posters and graphic artists was Poland. With a few exceptions, Polish posters are no longer the ones we knew. Many Polish works in the exhibition challenge what we might call the old traditional approach and display different understandings. The posters of the post-1950 or 1955 generation stand out immediately with their difference. I have always wondered – and discussed with my students – whether Polish artists who produce such successful posters on cultural subjects could sustain the same success if they made posters for products like Coca-Cola. At this biennale I found the answer by looking at the language used especially by Poland’s younger generation. In the near future we may see surprising new Polish posters with completely transformed form. American posters, on the other hand, attracted attention with their return to past styles. I can say that the most successful and numerous examples of Postmodernism were to be found in American posters. One of the most important aspects of the exhibition, in my opinion, is that national characteristics are gradually disappearing and we are moving toward a single universal language. That is the basis of graphic art and where its superiority comes from. Graphic design is a universal language. Because of its functionality it has been so since the cave era. If you approach posters wearing the spectacles of nationalism, a Polish, Portuguese or Russian graphic artist can seriously mislead you. The graphic artists of every country have used whatever form or approach they wished in their posters without the slightest complex.

Yurdaer Altıntaş, A Short Graphic Journey, Gösteri Art Journal 1988, Issue 94

Everyone – from clients to graphic artists, agency owners to some educators and students – agrees on one point: “graphic design education is bad.” Increasingly, it is almost non-existent. The responsibility naturally falls on the educators. It is impossible not to agree. There are certain professions – medicine, nursing, the clergy – that you cannot practise unless you have love for people in your heart. Education is the same. If you do not love children and young people you cannot do it. And you certainly cannot teach art. That is where it begins.

When graphic artists and those close to us look from the outside they think that fixing all the negatives in education is very easy. This view stems from a somewhat superficial approach and from not knowing the problems of education and its bureaucracy. Moreover, being an educator is hard work. Teaching art is even harder. In my opinion teaching graphic design is the hardest of all. Simply teaching what you know is not enough. Besides, in our country almost no one knows graphic arts theoretically. Put the well-meaning friends who criticise in front of students and what they have to say won’t last ten minutes. It has been tried; they themselves are surprised. Some of the criticisms concern the failure to produce successful artists, others that graduates cannot even do a proper paste-up. It is assumed that every student can know everything and that all must be successful. That is impossible anywhere in the world. At one time our students were required to do internships; we almost begged people to take them. Sadly, most of those who criticised education did not want to take any students, and even when they did they often avoided paying even a small amount to cover travel and meals. Many similar things can be said about the critics. Their own failure to contribute to education in their own way is another side of the problem. • A Monologue on Graphic Design Education, Gösteri Art Journal 1988, Issue 96

“A designer will naturally produce things to improve his or her financial situation; but it is not obligatory to sell one’s soul to the devil in the process.”

“There are professions – medicine, nursing, the clergy – that you cannot practise unless love for humanity is in your heart. The same is true of education. If you do not love children and young people you cannot do it. And you certainly cannot teach art.”