Close Witnessing on Tintin and Doğu

I write this piece from a grey zone. I could have written it from a curatorial perspective or through the window of art criticism attempting a complete objectivism by paying attention to shadow my personal closeness to the artist and his process; but I won’t. Instead, I will be a writer using her professional background and mostly benefiting from a rare chance on earth to witness the life and work of Doğu Çankaya in every step of the way. For that reason, my close testimony will lead the way I compose this piece.

This grey zone gives me the privilege and the responsibility of keeping one foot in the academic knowledge and the other in a private universe. I sincerely believe that, although Doğu barely speaks about his work and rarely gives clues on his thinking and making process, someone must try to enlighten some background information that can trigger the ways in which it manifests itself in his work and his creative process.

Tintin series is the generic name of the painting group that Doğu initiated in 2020. Apart from tens of drawings on paper on the same subject, he produced eighty one oil paintings until May 2021.

Although there may not be vital differences for a viewer in general, according to Doğu slightest variations among paintings can be enough to divide them into groups. Since he begins more than one painting at a time and approaches to the process as a whole he usually works in series and sub-series (or groups). I have never witnessed him make a single painting at a time and never worked behind an easel or against a wall.  He is not one of the artists who does not pass to another work until the previous one finishes. His thinking fast and in multiple directions affects his working process.

He usually paints on papers that he places on the floor or a large workshop table in a row, twirls around them and intervenes simultaneously a few. He used to exercise this method frequently in his Kadıköy Yoğurtçu Park studio back in the days when I first met him in Istanbul in the early 2000s. He continues working like this, today in his Bodrum studio where he makes the Tintin series. He believes that this method enables him to see the works all together and to think as a whole. I did not get this information directly from him. I convey it based on my witnessing a formal conversation he once had with a gallery owner visiting the studio.

If I go back to Tintin, it is a series of original paintings based on the illustrated books called ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ and characters created by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Doğu depicts moments and figures from the books and engages them with his world. During another formal conversation he answers to the question “Why Tintin?” as follows:

“(When I was a child) Tintin showed me the adventures I would not and could not take.. places I would not or could not go to, the intricate situations I could not handle and I guess he taught them to me... The reason I have reconnected with him must be because I miss these situations.”[1]

Yes, he may have formed such a bond with Tintin but it also came to my knowledge that when he was a boy he was found of many comic books like Texas, Zagor, Red Mask and Judas. Still, in my opinion if there is a ground zero for him to go back to Tintin, that must be Paris.

We have spent some time in Paris almost every year from 2013 to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Although these visits exceeded short touristic trips and were around two to three weeks, it was never long enough for Doğu to stay in a new place and especially not in Paris. He has an urge to create routines for himself in everything and routines require time and repetition. Nevertheless, we strolled the city streets, experienced the daily life patterns and ardently visited the cultural institutions. Each time, he returned with new metaphorical windows in his head, producing many drawings and new project ideas.

At this point I want to speculate on our visit to a comics fair at Le Carreau du Temple in the third district of Paris in 2015. This could be a moment registered in Doğu’s mind. The fair was hosting the publishers, second-hand book sellers and the comic book writers. The diversity of this world and its reception by the audience seemed very rich and impressive. This might be one of the influential moments for the Tintin series.

The history and the discussions around the comics and its history goes back to the early twentieth century. Pioneered by Hergé, the creator of Tintin and the following comic book artists of the School of Brussels, the story-telling style called ligne claire (clear line) has a significant place in this history[2]. In 1946, Hergé whose real name was Geroges Prosper Remi and who was working for the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle began to publish his Tintin books that consisted of twenty four books. In 2021, Doğu has already got all of the twenty four adventures in his library and has honoured them in his painting.

The comic book tradition which does not belong to the high culture has lived through a long period of unwelcoming by the modernist point of view. During this time it was overlooked, called as “counter-art” and discussed that it might be considered closer to the literary tradition than the arts. Several critics argued that in spite of its visual elements comics had narrative elements which connected it more to the literary texts. Maurice Horn and Will Eisner were two of those critics. Moreover, names like Sterling North and Wolfgang Fuchs called the comic books as a “poisonous mushroom” and accused them to be “the tool of few newspaper owners who want to enlarge their power span and control over the market”. [3]

Looking into the visual arts one can observe that in the West, Roy Lichtenstein in the 1960s and other artists in the upcoming years referred to the world of the cartoons and comics. Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, both of whose works Doğu loves are some of the examples. Also, along with a long list of artists Joyce Pensato, Kenny Sharf ve Takashi Murakami fall into that category.[4] In the 1970s although comic books were not considered as a research area for the arts and art history, it began to be so in the popular culture studies, communication studies and of course in cultural research studies.

Previously, I mentioned about the three groups of Tintin paintings. The first one is what I call as the “framed” group. As a part of the process Doğu touched the frames to playfully include them into the final presence of the painting. The second group is an homage to Brugel, a master that Doğu admires a lot and has honoured him in a previous occasion in which he has given a response to our Festival of Insignificance exhibition at halka sanat projesi in 2019. This group which I call “Tintin and the Old Master” contains photocopies of Brugel’s paintings in the background. The third group consists of three paintings with distinct similar visual forms and textural elements that separates them from two other groups but complement each other.

Doğu creates his own layers when handling the Tintins. The series includes Doğu’s characteristic lines and original figures. Also, it has the humanoid figurine called “dogū” from the Japanese Jōmon period (14.000 B.C. – 300 B.C.) which was the central figure of Doğu’s 2012 exhibition carrying the same name. The result is the coming together of the pieces from a well-known comic book, photocopies of an old master’s work, collages from Doğu’s own drawings and repeating figures and assemblages of diverse additional materials such as metal pins and paper stickers to create layers of a new and authentic composition.

The last point I want to mention is the way Doğu uses Tintin which is a classic comic book character. I use the word classic in the sense of Turkish Language Institution’s dictionary describes “classic” such as “an exemplary work in its genre that has not lost its value by the length of the time that passed since its creation”. In spite of the fact that Tintin stories belong to the mid-20th century they are capable of attracting audiences in different geographies and ages. They do not address to any specific social group nor represent any popular current. Its associability and amicability comes from its timelessness.

Doğu makes this classic character and its connotations a descriptive portion of his work, but he does not do it in a loud dominating tone. He honours Tintin, its creator and all readers coming from different directions. He includes them into his creative zone and invites new audiences. By doing so, first of all he makes his original works, tells his own word. Tintin and others becomes one of the respected media within the process.

Hence, my opinion is that the end result shows itself as a series of paintings that, just like the adventures of Tintin, speaks to an audience from different geographies, ages and social clusters who can make their own metaphorical excavation and interpret the paintings individually as they make sense of them. I believe that this feature transforms this series into an authentic work carrying the basic elements of Doğu Çankaya’s paintings.

[1] A dialogue with Zeynep Gögüş, writer and journalist, 2021

[2] Ligne claire (clear line), is a style of drawing which uses  clear strong lines all of the same width and no hatching, while contrast is downplayed as well. Cast shadows are often illuminated. https://comicbookgraphicdesign.com/comic-art-terms-ligne-claire/

[3] The book I refer to for the history and discussions around the comic boks is: Sanat Karşısında Çizgi Roman (Comic books Against Art), Bart Beaty, 2017, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Publications

[4] Jaqui Palumbo, 7 Artists inflenced by cartoons or Comics, Artsy Visual Arts Section, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-7-artists-influenced-cartoons-comics