Abstract

It was not possible to mention a Western-style art education and an artistic production of current quantity and style
two centuries ago in Turkey. In other words, existing style of art and art education in Turkey has a quite short history. Thus, it is
logical to confer that a quick and radical period of change in Turkish art world was experienced within a pretty short time. In this
study, putting forth the emergence and development of Western style painting and the education of painting in Turkey with its
main lines, it was tried to analyze that how did the process of change affected the actors in the field of art. As a result of this
analysis, it was concluded that as the artistic change in the field of painting in Ottoman Empire and in the following Turkish
Republic did not arise out of internal dynamics of artistic production field, but from the Westernization desire of the political
power, nearly everything about art was in the monopoly of the political power about art for a quiet long time, and there had been
no other social stratum supporting and demanding art, the artists had established clientelist relationships with the political power
especially till the 1940s and formed a language of painting parallel to the demands of the political power.