A closer look at Sotheby’s Turkish Contemporary sale comes with a film at Sotheby’s site and Georgina Adam’s reporting. Like Arab and Iranian art, which burst on the scene rather quickly, Turkish art is making a bid for the spotlight.

Georgina Adam adds a little more detail:

The country has an impressive number of billionaires – 35, according to Forbes last year. Now Sotheby’s is opening an office in Istanbul and launching its first sale of Turkish contemporary art, which is to be held in London on March 4. Going under the hammer will be 73 works.

“We have a good client base of Turkish collectors who show an interest in their own culture, but there are also a lot of international collectors who want to discover art from different cultures, so that’s why the sale is in London,” says Sotheby’s Dalya Islam. And independent art consultant Orhan Taner explains why he thinks it deserves to be better known: “Turkish contemporary art was handicapped by being a closed market, with only a small diaspora to kick-start interest outside the country, unlike with Chinese or Indian art,” he says, “but there are very talented artists in Turkey, and the art they are making is culturally accessible to western tastes.

Young Turks and Old Rivalries (Financial Times)