Flat hunting continues. I am finding it rather painful as my attention moves between work and flats, with little attention for anything else. We took a friend to see the place with the beautiful views I mentioned a few days ago, and he was rather good as an impartial, unemotional eye, and showing up the points that were not great about it and that could not be addressed: the small size, the fact that the lovely study was basically an enclosed part of the balcony so could not be considered a room, really, and the low ceilings. But the view remains beautiful so it remains on our shortlist.
This afternoon we also went to see another flat in the same building as the one that most appeals on paper. This is one downstairs and is very over-priced, as even the agent seemed to acknowledge as she didn’t seem particularly interested in selling it, perhaps was even a little embarrassed at the asking price. This has a beautiful three-lobed living room and a tiled central hallway. No view, though I think the upstairs one will have more of one, and the shared terrace has a sweep across the Bosphorus.
Before the viewing we went to the Pera Museum, a very good small gallery over several floors. The top two had an exhibition of contemporary miniature, and I was gratified to see that the Pakistani ones had a level of skill far beyond any of the others, and were generally very good. Bashir sahib at the NCA in Lahore has single-handedly kept this art alive, he’s a treasure beyond words. Though the installations were very ponderous, including Shahzia Sikander’s. I am very fond of her art and the way she tears apart miniature motifs and animates them, but find the installations and videos rather eye-rolling. The Turkish ones were rather poor – very bad technique of course, but also just not particularly interesting.
The next floor down was on Albanian social realism. This was full of beefy young pioneers and square jawed heroes, so a rather jarring contrast to the delicacy of the floors above. I found it rather hard to focus on it as my brain was still full of the upper floors, but I imagine it was very interesting, and under other circumstances I enjoy that sort of work.
The next floor down had some orientalist work by Ottoman artists, which was rather interesting, as of course they were looking at and orientalising their own culture. The equivalent of the heat and dust and mangoes school of South Asian literature perhaps. The centrepiece here was a painting of a turtle tamer, a tall thin man in a turban and robes. If the sign is to be believed there was not in fact such a thing as an Ottoman turtle tamer, but it was an image based on a Korean picture cut from a newspaper. Which in itself is a peculiar form of orientalising.
The final floor had a vast collection of weights and measures, which were both interesting and quite beautiful. Thousands of years worth, too, and interesting that in terms of ornament and form we’ve largely come full circle back to the simple lines of some of the very early ones. No hanging weights with a duck head on one side and a thumb on the other here.