FG: First Person Istanbul l2 September l992 The Fetiye Painting

That Fetiye Weekend

The ululant call to prayer pulsates the Istanbul night. From where I curl myself-up in the tufted green studio chair, the enormous moon luminates this Fetiye painting, and I wait for the thick coffee to amplify my adrenals. I had wanted to make a painting about that weekend: a painting that would last (unlike that weekend). While working on the linen surface I had searched behind my eyeballs for memory: a thoughtless process that had summoned up a chronological filmstrip, unrolled a recollection. In Fetiye I had intentionally followed contours with my eyes , talking to myself about color and form. Later, in the studio I recalled the broiling hotness, the parched white light, the unblemished cerulean sky, in which the relentless sun had , each night, yielded to the heavy moon. From the port side of our boat we would dive into the Mediterranean where we'd glide and gaze into the glazed layers of the Sea. At the end of prolonged days we'd bob alongside archeological boats where scientists and divers had excavated ancient underwater cities, digging the subterranean landscapes, hauling up amphoras, planting them in the sand to dry. Late one afternoon, when the sun had been tangent to the horizon, we anchored near a cave. I followed Ustun to the opening, sensitizing my eyes and ears to articulations, reverberations, chromatic textures. Ustun disappeared until, suddenly, I felt his head between my thighs; grasping my knees he adjusted my body on his shoulders so I might better see, so I might drag my hands across the rough, brittle surfaces. Cupping his jaw in my hands I looked at him, upside down, relating the stories about the French school boys' discovery of Lascaux Cave, and the Spanish child who, sitting on her father's shoulders, looked up and discovered the Altamira Cave paintings. How do you know such stories, Freni (he had not believed me). Ustun Bey, I looked down into his Black Sea eyes, I am an artist. It is my job to know such things! He laughed and flipped me into the frigid water. In the heat of the night we made slow, wet love, ignoring the hideous pitches of screeching mosquitoes. The following night, when the bus rolled out of the station and and the ochre dusk had blended into the ultramarine sky,tears flooded my eyes. Next to me, Ustun whispered, "Good-bye, Feteye." The all-night ride from Fetiye to Istanbul snaked through the mountains which were lighted like a Montagna landscape. The great low moon sculpted stark hard-edged forms that were so white against the landscape, I was tricked into believing there was snow on the ground. I couldn't sleep. Next to me, the man with whom I had just spent the last weekend of the summer, held my hand in his lap and snored on my shoulder. During the night he awoke and pulled at my knee, pointing up at the sky, where the ultramarine had gone violet and every star in the galaxy appeared in blinking formation. It was as close to ole' Vincent's Starry Night as I'd ever seen. Ustun fell back asleep and I examined the Van Gogh night, asking myself what I might say about this sky, this heat, this light, this weekend. Several hours after the bus dropped me on the E-5 Highway in Bostanci--exhausted, wired, unable to call up a vocabulary to write in my journal--I began this extraordinary painting--a painting that erupted from the guts, from a place somewhere deep in DNA. Because it was impossible to have said it any other way. It is a fervent painting: circles, arches, blazing gold orbits. Glazed layers, like the flesh of a Titian. None of this was ever planned; it simply emerged, autonomously. Clearly, this painting says something about libido, about love--though, not necessarily the object of that love. I begin to acknowledge my need for passion (other than painting passion). I also understand that while I love Ustun, I am not in love with him. Surely this painting is a mythical summation of these three-and-a-half years in Turkey: ubiquitous domes and mandalas; splendid artisans and antiquities; voluptuous fruit and vegetation. The relentless sun. And my relentless self. When Ustun calls again I tell him that I have finished the most wonderful painting about Fetiye. "Finally! At last," he exclaims. I picture him at the other end of the line, leaning back in his swivel oak office chair, crossing one leg over his thigh, lighting a cigarette and exhaling the smoke through a wide grin, up at the ceiling fan. Four days later he is at my door with flowers, pistachios and Champaign and caviar, "from the Russians," he winks. "I want to see, Freni, this painting about Fetiye," He kisses me and carries his gifts to the kitchen. So I pull at his arm, and his solid body follows me to the studio. For slow, quiet seconds he scrutinizes the painted surface, rubbing his jaw, squinting his stare. He leans forward, backs up, teeters on his heels, and shifts his thick weight from one foot to the other. At last he turns to me, his palms outstretched, his shoulders shrugged and asks, "So where's the boat?"