Yuksel Arslan

Yuksel Arslan

The Turkish artist Yuksel Arslan died in April, a Turkish artist that I know, Deniz Uster (who also makes very interesting drawings) sent me a message to tell me the news, she said she saw the similarities between his work and mine. Yuksel Arslan was one of those artists that you probably would not come across unless you had a particular interest in drawing as narrative. I came across his work a few years ago and always admired the way he could compress an idea into an image.
He called himself a 'person who scribbles', the term artist he felt had too many connotations and offended his socialist sensibility, a sensibility that would cause him to draw coins as heads for the 'capitalist oriented'. 

Labour integrated into Capital

He wrote across his images, sometimes to the point where the writing takes over and becomes the main pictorial element, but everything is integrated by a sensibility that always runs throughout his work. He refers to both Eastern and Western philosophers and writers in his work, and looks at subjects as diverse as politics, anatomy, religion and nature. He called his works, 'Artures', not wanting to be categorised by any existing art genres, and for metaphoric purposes used ash, egg white, billiard chalk, honey and sometime his own body secretions as binders for his pigments or directly as stainers. These materials when worked together gave his work its characteristic warm tinge.  

Yuksel Arslan

I have always thought that one of England's best artists was James Gilray and Yuksel Arslan is an artist of a similar sensibility.

James Gilray

Political satire and Surrealism fit together neatly. If I think about contemporary politics, the world stage feels to me as if reality is usurping fantasy. Politics is no longer the place for the sane, it has become a bear-pit for the paranoid and delusional. It is good to see that the tradition of political cartooning continues and perhaps one day its best practitioners will be recognised as the fine artists that they are and will hang in the Tate Gallery alongside all those other artists who have struggled to make sense of our complex and awe inspiring world.

Martin Rowson

See also:

Drawing and politics

A reminder of consequences