Earth. Water. Tree. Environmental Aspects in the Work of Itzhak

Earth. Water. Tree.
Environmental Aspects in the Work of Itzhak Danziger
Itzhak Danziger, 1968 Israel Prize laureate and a professor in the Technion Faculty of
Architecture, will always be remembered as an artist, a sculptor, an educator and a landscape
designer, who left his mark on the Israeli art world and on Israeli cultural consciousness as a
whole. This charismatic figure offered a new model of the Israeli, one who found a different
way to wander across the country, exploring its treasures and its open spaces, appreciating its
natural and cultural qualities – and crafting the ideal relationship between society on the one
hand, and place, environment, sites, landscape, art and history on the other.
For many, Danziger is identified with “Nimrod,” the figurative-archaic statue he created in
1939 that was repeatedly chosen as the quintessential Israeli masterpiece. Few were aware of
his environmental work, to which he brought an innovative perception of the landscape as a
system that combines both ecological and cultural elements. His experimentation with
subjects like conservation and restoration, and his field and theoretical studies of the issues of
earth, water and tree, are a source of inspiration for contemporary artists, architects and
scientists grappling with issues that Danziger long ago identified as urgent and acute, and that
should never again be allowed to disappear from the public awareness.
The current exhibition – Earth. Water. Tree. – focuses on Danziger‟s later works, from the
beginning of the 1970s until his death in 1977. His interest in those years was in garden
design, and the study, drawing and photography of holy places, ritual sites and landscapes.
The exhibition recreates two legendary installations: “Hanging Artificial Landscape” and
“Aqueduct" These ambitious projects, like his concept of landscape in general, demonstrate
his belief in the role of the artist as an intermediary between art in all its different disciplines
and science and technology, and as a social healer. His contribution to both artistic theory and
practical creativity inspired a new aesthetic language, paving the way for even marginalized
members of society to put down roots and become an integral part of the landscape,
appreciate its natural cycles, and make it flourish without attempting to return it to what it
once was.
Danziger‟s landscape research focused on the fundamental physical and metaphysical
elements of “place,” a concept that came to be associated with him in Israeli culture. His
approach to the idea of “place” – making it his own by hiking it, living in it, internalizing the
narratives of its past, and the creativity it inspired, were an embodiment of the established
Zionist position, and expressed the desires of an entire generation to put down roots and tame
an alien landscape. Over time, the concept of “place” has been interpreted in various ways,
some challenging, others dubious or even contradictory. It has increasingly become identified
with the survival of the wanderer, with land confiscation and territorial conquest, and with the
tension between „here‟ and „there.‟ “To me,” said Danziger in 1977, “the most important
thing is the relationship to the place, to the local landscape… the search for roots here.”
For Danziger, earth, water and tree were natural elements that carried multiple meanings.
Earth meant land and ground for rehabilitation and garden design; but in its solid state – the
rock from which a sculpture emerges – it was also, or perhaps especially, the very earth of the
Land of Israel from which one could elicit the ancient cultural milieu. It was that relationship,
he felt, which would allow him to flourish and nurture his roots.
He was inspired as well by water. Its natural and aesthetic association with holy places, and
the methods of channeling it across the landscape, found expression in many of his sculptures
and drawings, and was central to his environmental work.
The tree, on the other hand, is an organic link between earth and water and between earth and
the human being; but it has conceptual and traditional sides to it as well. Examples of the
significance Danziger attributed to the cultivation of trees and plants are the sprouting wheat
in the installation “Hanging Artificial Landscape”; his experiments to find the most suitable
vegetation for the rehabilitation of the Nesher Quarry; and of course planting ceremonies. He
regarded cultivation as a consecrated activity which (in his words) “elicits an emotional
response of a person‟s connection to the place he loves most”
The installation “Hanging Artificial Landscape” was part of the ground-breaking exhibition,
“Concept + Information,” curated by Yona Fischer at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, in 1971.
“Aqueduct,” on the other hand, was conceived as an exercise in three-dimensional design,
constructed on the old Technion campus, but never exhibited.
Another fundamental aspect of the exhibition is devoted to photographs, drawings and prints
connected to the rehabilitation of the Nesher Quarry, the bustan of Wadi Sheikh, Hurshat
Ha‟arba‟im (the Grove of the Forty), sacred trees, and the planting ceremony in memory of
the casualties of the Egoz army unit. The Nesher Quarry project focused on the land, and the
way people exploit and deplete it with no thought for the ecosystem. In Wadi Sheikh and
Hurshat Ha‟arba‟im he examined the subject of water: accompanied by his Technion
students, he analyzed and demonstrated bygone methods of collecting, conveying and
utilizing water. He attached great importance to trees, especially in the context of sacred trees
and groves, and was able to distill that idea and give it prominence in his last project: the
memorial tree-planting ceremony for Egoz in the Northern Golan, near Nimrod‟s Castle.
All those places Danziger tried to rehabilitate were soon ignored and neglected, and in their
deteriorated state they cry out, now more than ever, for help. Nesher Quarry is still an
abandoned gash in the landscape; the well in Hurshat Ha‟arba‟im is still in ruins; and there is
a demolition order out against the bustan of Wadi Sheikh. The water problem has only
worsened. Subjects like belonging to a place continue to trouble the contemporary world of
culture and art, but in general they are addressed warily and without sentimentality, out of a
growing awareness of historical injustices
Sharon Yavo Ayalon
Curator