Newton Harrison, founder of the eco-art movement with his wife Helen Mayer Harrison, Create works that combine science, cartography, biology, urban planning and agriculture He died on September 4th at his home in Santa Cruz, California. he was 89 years old.
His son Joshua said the cause was pancreatic cancer.
Long before climate change was public knowledge, the Harrisons focused on its impact. They worked as an educator at the University of California, San Diego – he made sculptures and taught art. She painted and worked as an administrator — when they were inspired by the environmental movement. She read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and he was thinking about cellular structure. It was the heyday of conceptual art, and artists were beginning to imagine work that wasn’t confined to gallery walls.
“If we’re going to survive as a species,” Harrison later said of her early pivot to environmentally focused art. point or another. So I started researching what that means. “
Mr. and Mrs. Harrison raised catfish and then Sri Lankan crabs, simulating the crabs’ native sea monsoons to encourage crab reproduction. They studied soil science to create topsoil, grow pastures and orchards, and demonstrate the effects of global warming on alpine plants. 2001 video work It shows how flowers, grasses and lichens bloom and disappear.
Their work was contemplative and poetic, blending text, photography and maps. It can also be didactic and prescriptive. They investigated ecological hazards and provided solutions. 2008 work They proposed forests planted with ancient species that could not only withstand climate change, but also mitigate its effects.
They worked with government agencies, scientists and city planners, and often received grants from scientific organizations. A commission from a Dutch cultural organization prompted the developer to create a design that would preserve parks and farmland for the growing population, rather than pave it as suggested. Dutch Green Heart Vision It became a permanently protected open space. Other projects were more theoretical or experimental, sometimes confusing or outright sabotaging audiences.
An early installation, Hog Pasture, was intended for real pigs to graze in an indoor field specially planted with everything that pigs find delicious. Created for the 1971 group exhibition Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Elements of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The show also included works by Andy Warhol, who contributed to Mylar’s balloons, and Christo, who wrapped the sidewalks of Fenway’s Park. But the museum was hesitant to have a live pig, even though Harrison insisted it was a “randomly moving piece of our work, not an animal.”
(Mr. Harrison liked to say, “I like to approach things with an open mind and a bad attitude.”)
In 2012, the Harrisons performed the work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. They invited a charming six-month-old piglet named Wilma to snort in a small pasture. video of that performanceHarrison said, “This pig, Wilma, makes up for the mistake the Museum of Fine Arts Boston made 40 years ago.”
And then there was the big catfish scandal. An installation called “Portable Fish Farm,” part of the California artist’s group exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1971, featured catfish, oysters, lobsters and brine shrimp in six 20-foot long tanks. to explore how humans can act. Feed yourself in a polluted environment. Rounding out the job is the fried fish, a hushpuppy feast made from catfish. But when it was discovered by someone that the method of harvesting those fish was electrocution, a problem arose.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals protested the “ritual slaughter” of defenseless fish, and comedian Spike Milligan smashed a gallery window with a hammer. A compromise was reached, As Time magazine reported at the time: The feast continues, but without killing the fish in public. In time, Americans who missed the London show will be able to see another Harrison exhibit of a snail being nibbled by a duck in San Diego, where “whatever the duck leaves behind will be served to art lovers as escargot.” It will,” he added.
Newton Abner Harrison was born on October 20, 1932 in Brooklyn and raised in New Rochelle, New York. His mother Estelle (Ferber) Harrison was a homemaker. His father, Harvey Harrison, worked for his wife’s family business, the kitchenware company Faberware.
Newton’s family unsuccessfully tried to recruit him into the kitchenware business. he wanted to be an artist. He attended Antioch College in Ohio before being drafted during the Korean War in 1953, the same year he married Helen Mayer. After serving two years, he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
In the 1960s, the Harrisons lived in a cold-water flat in the East Village. It entertained local musicians such as the Clancy Brothers and saxophonist Archie Shepp. And he threw himself into the social justice movement of the time. Mr. Harrison was teaching painting at the Henry Street Settlement. Ms. Harrison was the New York coordinator of the Women’s Strike for Peace.
Mr. Harrison received both a BFA and an MFA from Yale University in 1965 — Mr. Harrison earned a master’s degree in educational philosophy from New York University and taught in New York City public schools — and ten years later, The couple moved to San Diego to get a job at the University of California. Harrison also worked as a sculptor, creating light installations. Harrison’s own practice included conceptual his performance work making his strawberry jam.
In addition to his son Joshua, Mr. Harrison has two sons, Stephen and Gabriel. Daughter Joy Harrison. She has nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Mr. Harrison passed away in 2018.
As Joshua Harrison recalled, his father described working with his mother: we take turns. “
The Harrisons are professors emeritus at the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Force Majeure Research Centeris an organization that brings together scientists and artists to work on projects to tackle climate change.
When Glueck of The Times summarized their work in 1980 as having a cosmic scope, she referred to work that addressed glacial melting, acid rain and other issues. She asked Mr. Harrison why these attempts should be considered art.
“Why don’t you call it social science when you read Dostoevsky?” he replied. “He took deals with the world and replaced them with images and stories.
Harrison also told Glueck: The idea that technology will solve our problems is an illusion. We must drastically change our consciousness and behavioral patterns.