Another world photography and painting artist Hal Harshaun dies at age 60

Hal Hillshaun, an artist known for his ubiquitousness around New York City's cultural scene, nevertheless passed away on February 4th, producing unforgettable photographs and landscape paintings using antique cameras and homemade paints.

His sister, Harriet Harshawn, said the cause was coronary artery disease. He died in a friend's apartment in Manhattan. There, we went to celebrate the opening of a group show featuring his work “Let be Light.”

New York artists are often spoken in monolithic terms, as if they were all racing to become the next Jeff Coons. That's the case for many. For those who don't, Hillshawn served as avatar and inspiration, a model for how to live a creative life that appears to be out of the way of financial concerns.

Other artists of his generation have been riding the art market boom of the past 30 years, but he remained alone and rarely sold his work in gallery. His spare website features some of his paintings and photographs, but no contact information or personal information.

His work was absolutely analog. Hirshorn made his own paint using traditional materials and scrutinized the Chelsea Flea Market for antique camera parts.

His landscapes were painted on a grungy green and autumn brown colour palette. They were Turner-like in a Turner-like abstraction, with swirls of misty clouds shading over the rugged cliffs and stormy seas.

Similarly, his photos seemed to be out of time. He made them by applying salt and silver solutions to drawing paper and layering them with negative and exposure to light to capture images. Techniques developed in England in the mid-19th century were eventually disliked because they required very long exposures that made the image difficult to focus.

But the quality was something that Hillshawn liked. Blurry has often become etheric in photos of women engaged in outdated housework like nude or floor scrubbing. To add authenticity, he occasionally used makeup to taint the models' feet.

In other works, he created “Memento Mori” and used a 19th century approach to photographs in which the bodies of recently deceased figures are placed in realistic poses. (However, Hillshawn used the live model.)

In 2011 he performed the “funeral service” of Seaberry Tredwell, a wealthy Manhattanight who died in 1865, and photographed the procession as Mr. Toledowell and his family moved from the Merchant's House Museum, where he lived in East Village, Grace Church, and finally the Merchant's House Museum, where he lived in Marble Cemetery in New York City.

“His sensibility was to echo with reference to 19th-century paintings and photography,” said Jeffrey Berliner, a photographer and close friend of Hillshawn, in an interview. “But to do it in a personal, subjective, modern way.”

Mr. Hillshawn's character coincided with his art.

For some reason, he had a LinkedIn page. Naturally, it was sparse and enigmatic, describing him as an “artist of everything and nothing.”

He seemed to be everywhere. His friends and admirers called him like Zelig. They often encounter him at museums and gallery openings, as well as walking randomly down the sidewalks and passing through Central Park.

“If I hadn't known, I would have thought he was stalking me,” painter Alix Bailey said in an interview. “But that was everyone's experience with Hal.”

He was hard to overlook, with his thin, pale face, curl mops and piercing eyes. His fingers were cigarettes stained with smoking for decades. He had the habit of walking slowly and then suddenly breaking into the sprint before applying the brakes.

He spoke quietly, intentionally, and great erudition. He was polite and a little formal. He had an encyclopedia of art history up to the latest trends, but preferred long-forgotten side channels of artists and movement.

“There were almost Edwardians about him,” his friend James Harney said in an interview. “But he also had a playful quality.”

Harold Timothy Harshawn was born in Philadelphia on January 12, 1965. His father, Bruce Hillshaun, was a foreign affairs officer, and as a result, Hull had the childhood of Zhou Yun, who lived in Brussels, London and Hong Kong, among others, before becoming involved in Washington.

His mother, Anne Sue (Friedberg) Hillshawn, was an art historian who worked for the US Intelligence Agency. After his parents divorced when he was nine years old, Hal lived with her in Washington. He often cited her as having a major impact on his work.

Along with his sister, Mr. Hillshawn was survived by his brothers Barry and Dalton.

He attended Bennington University, where he studied art history and architecture, but left before graduating. He also studied in Venice through fellowship with the Peggy Guggenheim collection.

Hillshawn arrived in New York in 1989. This arrived as if the economic recession had put an end to the fierce boom in art and real estate around Lower Manhattan.

He was drawn to East Village galleries and clubs, where much of the boom of the 1980s had been pervasive, but he discovered that once cheap homes were uprooted by gentlemen.

Instead, he found a small rent-controlled studio apartment off the coast of Washington Square Park. There, he lived for the rest of his life. Cheap, but Spartan: He had a hot plate and shared a bathroom with another renter.

“There's a lot of stuff being made about fame and influence, and that's not important compared to your inner dialogue of why you make art,” said Tom Sachs, an artist who knew Hirshorn from the university, in an interview. “Hal's art was like that. He had a very personal inner dialogue about his art.”

Last year, Hirshorn and high school friend Jeremy Hutchins headed to Midland, Georgia for his latest project at Pierce Chapel African Cemetery. In the 19th century, dozens of enslaved people were buried there. A group of black protectionists is about to restore it.

As he did with the Treadwell series, Mr. Hillshawn performed the funeral and filmed it with his salt print camera.

He had no opportunity to develop negatives before his death, but Hutchins said he hopes to finish his friend's job this year. It will also be exhibiting Hillshawn's extensive collection of work and antique cameras this month at the Ethan Cohen Gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea section.