Here are a few paintings by the 19th century painter Seker Ahmet Pasa. They have an unexpected viability given their disjointed perspectives, unconventional scale jumps and multiple vanishing points. His landscapes in particular are somehow both convincing and otherworldly. The quality of being not quite locatable, is attributable to a collision of cultures. Ahmet was Ottoman by birth then extraordinarily went to study in Europe with Boulanger and Gerome. His colors and brushwork belong to the pre-Impressionistic Barbizon school , reminiscent of Claude and Courbet , but there is something else at work . Seker returned to Istanbul in 1871 and reimmursed himself in the tradition of the Persian miniatures and book illustrations that were his heritage. The dreamy, almost allegorical mood of these later works consequently convey aspects of both schools of painting, the European and the Persian. Further, they say something about time. This was the era of Heidegger . Man's relationship to time was the primary philosophic consideration of the day . When we look at spatial relationships we also look at temporal relationships. These later paintings of Seker Ahmet register as parables about time and, to use Dante's metaphor : at what point do we enter the woods ? Where is the viewer in space/time and where is the painter ? The hovering ambiguity of point of view coupled with the straddling of traditions place " The Deer " wonderfully in both worlds and also outside of either.
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