Collecting Contemporary Art in Turkey: Taste or Consciousness?
“I buy what I like.”
Visual from the article ”How Can I Become an Art Collector?” by Fiammetta Rocco, The Economist.
“I buy what I like.” This single sentence, spoken by a collector while building their art collection, captures one of the defining dynamics of today’s art market:
Should the value of art be determined solely by personal taste, or does it also require a sense of context and responsibility?
The need to write this essay arose from a realization that in Turkey, art collecting is too often reduced to a matter of personal preference, overshadowing art history, aesthetic responsibility, and academic labor.
This text is, therefore, an attempt to leave a note for the future — to contribute intellectually to the next generation of collectors and to help sustain cultural continuity.
Art collecting is not limited to individual taste or investment concerns; it also plays a crucial role in shaping art history and constructing public memory.
Yet this role depends entirely on how a collection is built.
Collections that lack a conceptual, temporal, or artistic focus remain incoherent, preventing them from offering a deeper narrative.
If collectors, museums, and market actors in Turkey continue to treat artworks merely as objects of taste or investment rather than within an ideological and cultural framework, our cultural capital risks drifting toward an irreversible shallowness.
In the Footsteps of Rancière…
Philosopher Jacques Rancière argues that art is not merely a mode of representation, but a form of what he calls “the distribution of the sensible” — a system that defines what can be seen, said, and felt within a society.
Art does not simply judge what is beautiful or valuable; it determines which images, narratives, and historical contexts become visible.
From this perspective, collecting — in its old-fashioned sense — is not just a matter of private taste, but a process that shapes how art is represented in the public sphere.
Similarly, Hal Foster’s concept of the archaeology of art should be taken into account when forming a collection.
For Foster, art history is not only about preserving the past but also about shaping the meaning of those works in the present.
If collecting becomes a mechanism that merely follows market trends, then art history itself is no longer a narrative — it becomes a marketing strategy framed by temporary tastes.
Reducing art to mere preference sustains the superficial interpretations of those who hold cultural capital.
Collections built without a deep understanding of art sociology or aesthetics reflect not the testimony of history, but merely the commerce of art.
The Responsibility of Choice
Ultimately, collectors’ decisions determine an artist’s place in history.
If these decisions are guided only by material value, popularity, or personal taste, art history becomes partial and manipulated.
Collecting, therefore, is not merely an act of acquisition — it is an act of making history.
Today, collectors in Turkey are not constructing art history; they are simply buying it.
One reason may lie in the lack of academically grounded art advisors — though that is perhaps a topic for another essay.
Labor and Content, or Popularity and Network?
The global art market operates through manipulation — and Turkey is no exception.
This dynamic often eclipses academically trained artists whose practices are grounded in research and discipline.
The historical continuity of art is thus being ignored, as market logic replaces critical knowledge.
The market now values not only aesthetic or conceptual depth, but also an artist’s background, social network, and visibility.
As a result, works by academically trained artists, who devote years to their practice, are often undervalued compared to those of “instant artists” who rise through popularity or speculation.
Collecting has the power to historicize some artists while rendering others invisible.
At this point, Rancière’s notion of the aesthetic regime becomes relevant again — reminding us that every act of selection is also an act of exclusion, shaped by ideological systems that govern visibility.
Contemporary art publications, meanwhile, often reduce criticism to promotional writing, neglecting the value practice that sustains art history.
This diminishes intellectual depth and leaves the art scene vulnerable to short-term market manipulations.
As long as literary writers continue to dominate art publishing, and collectors and institutions keep evaluating art through trends, taste, and investment, the future of the Turkish art market will remain uncertain — and its cultural memory, fragmented.
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