M76 Bedri Baykam

The San Francisco Manifesto (1984)

The young Turkish Neo-Expressionist painter Bedri Baykam (b. 1957) wrote ‘The San Francisco Manifesto’ in June 1984 out of frustration at the absence of works by non-Western artists in the museums and galleries of the United States. A well-respected artist in Turkey, with a number of critically regarded exhibitions, Baykam had moved to the US in the early 1980s in the hope of gaining better recognition outside his homeland. His manifesto, written in English, was distributed outside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMMA) at the opening of an exhibition of Figurative Expressionist paintings titled The Human Condition. All of the artists in the show were from Europe and the United States, leading Baykam to ask if the story of Figurative Expressionism would go down in the history books as a purely Western phenomenon. The manifesto recounts his efforts to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of museum culture and argues that an insidious institutional racism conspired to obstruct all non-Western artists.

In 2015 Baykam was elected president of the International Association of Art (IAA), an organization supporting and promoting artists from all over the world and forging links between nations and cultures through art.

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ONE QUESTION HAS TO BE ANSWERED:

IS THE WESTERN WORLD ONCE AGAIN IN THE

PROCESS OF BUILDING MODERN ART HISTORY AS

SOLELY THE HISTORY OF OCCIDENTAL ARTISTS?

We are not going to change the way things have been for 100 years, but we should be able to think about the issue without being afraid.

In spring 1983, the assistant curator of the SFMMA informed me of a coming new expressionist show and advised me to write to the museum so that I could be considered to be part of it.

I wrote a letter and all I got back was a reply from the assistant curator telling me the director was too busy to see me, and my work. Being one of the leading artists of my country who has had a lot of international exposure, and the fact that in March 1983 I had had a 100 piece showing of my figurative expressionist work in a major museum in Istanbul, had rather led me to believe that the SFMMA would at least be interested in ‘looking’ at my pieces.

The first question is simple: Would the museum have had this attitude toward leading French, or German or Dutch artists?

I do not claim that I had to be part of this show … Maybe, I do not deserve it. But this refusal to listen, to see (which is not even a rejection), along with some similar incidents I have seen in the American art scene, makes me also ask the following questions:

These points raise some disturbing questions regarding the credibility of Western art politics.

I WISH THAT A SHOW ENTITLED ‘THE HUMAN

CONDITION’ ALSO REFERRED TO SOME OTHER

BILLIONS OF HUMANS, INSTEAD OF TURNING INTO A

SHOW THAT COULD HAVE BEEN CALLED, ‘THE

HUMAN CONDITION IN ZURICH AND CHICAGO, ETC.’

The issue goes way beyond my career concerns. Are we preparing shows and symposiums to determine a truthful approach to art, or is all of this a game played so that the western establishment can surely and peacefully perpetuate its cultural domination. I wish that a show entitled ‘The Human Condition’ also referred to some other billions of humans, instead of turning into a show that could have been called ‘The human condition in Zurich and Chicago’. What happened between SFMMA and me deserves apologies. Not from me. But from another curator. From another museum. From another country. From another group of countries for so long under heard, underestimated, neglected. Such prejudices have their economic reasons of course. But it takes art to bind nations and to jump over them.

What happened to myself in a way made me skeptical of all the Modern Art History I have learned. Here today you will be talking in reference to the past decades, mentioning Pollock, de Kooning, and Bacon. Maybe there also was Mohammed, or Roberto De La Pampas, and maybe the respected Turkish painter Abidin Dino, now living unknown in Paris, deserved as much credit as those other names. How come you want to quickly define new expressionism as only an American or European movement? Is it that you want to make sure that we are going to present new expressionism as a purely western phenomenon in the future reference books that our descendants will read?

To dismiss these issues is to take a step back into an easy and familiar resolution and to avoid confronting this major problem.

If you had never thought about it, now you did. The integrity of western art in the eyes of the rest of the world is at stake, the choice is yours. I could have gone inside the symposium and raised my own voice, but I would be easily vulnerable to accusations. I prefer leaving you with the issue. I will be available for comments between 12 and 2 pm in front of the museum. At 12 o’clock sharp, I want to believe that one American among 1000 will dare to raise his voice on behalf of this issue. In case the panelists or participants decide to invite me, I am ready to go in and to discuss this subject. Another world needs to be heard.