James Castle (September 25, 1899 – October 26, 1977) was an American artist born in Garden Valley, Idaho. Although Castle did not know about the art world outside of his small community, his work ran parallel to the development of

20th-century art Twentieth-century art—and what it became as modern art—began with modernism in the late nineteenth century. Overview Nineteenth-century movements of Post-Impressionism (Les Nabis), Art Nouveau and Symbolism led to the first twentieth-century ...

history. His works have been collected by major institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Castle's work which toured nationally in 2008–09. Castle's work entered the international arena with a major exhibition in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

at the

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...

in 2011 and was included in the 2013

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

exhibition ''The Encyclopedic Palace.'' In 2014 The Smithsonian American Art Museum featured their recent acquisition in the exhibition ''Untitled: The Art of James Castle'' and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

included their acquired collection of Castle's work in the 2017 exhibition ''Where We Are.''

Biography

James Castle was a self-taught artist who created drawings, assemblage and books throughout his lifetime. Castle was born profoundly

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

and for at least some time attended the Gooding School for the Deaf and the Blind in Gooding, Idaho, but it is not known to what extent he could read, write, or use

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

. Castle's artworks were created almost exclusively with found materials such as papers salvaged from common packaging and mail, in addition to food containers of all types. Castle mixed ink using

soot Soot ( ) is a mass of impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. It is more properly restricted to the product of the gas-phase combustion process but is commonly extended to include the residual pyrolysed ...

from the woodstove with saliva and applied it with tools of his own making, including sharpened sticks, and other found objects. His drawings sensitively depict interiors, buildings, animals, landscapes and people based on his family's rural Garden Valley homestead as well as the architecture and landscapes of the places he lived and visited. His former home in Boise, Idaho is now a cultural center devoted to his work and includes an artist-in-residence venue.

Books and articles

*''James Castle Memory Palace'', John Beardsley, Yale University Press and James Castle Collection and Archive (2021) *''The James Castle Primer'', Nicholas R. Bell, James Castle Collection and Archive (2018) *''Outliers and American Vanguard Art'', Lynne Cooke, National Gallery of Art (2018) *''James Castle: The Experience of Everyday'', Dennis Michael Jon, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2016) *''Untitled: The Art of James Castle'', Nicholas Bell and Leslie Umberger, with D. Giles Ltd., London (2014) *''The Encyclopedic Palace'', Massimiliano Gioni and Natalie Bell, Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2013) 309. *''Shock of the News'', Judith Brodie, Lund Humphries, (2012), 65. *''Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos'', Edited by Lynne Cooke, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2012) 96–99. *''James Castle'', Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany (2011) *''James Castle: Show and Store'', Edited by Lynne Cooke, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2011) *''James Castle'', The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2010) *''James Castle: A Retrospective'', Edited by Ann Percy, Yale University Press (2009) *''James Castle: A Retrospective'', by Lynne Cooke, ''Artforum'' (December 2009) 168–171. *''Touched into Being'' by Stephen Westfall, ''Art in America'', New York, (June 2001) 5–16. *''American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum'', by Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson, American Folk Art Museum in association with Henry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, (2001) *''Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists'', by Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. and Julia Weissman, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York (1974) 170.

Collections

James Castle's works are in the collections of the following institutions: *

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of ...

, New York, New York * Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois * Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California *

Boise Art Museum The Boise Art Museum (BAM) is located at 670 Julia Davis Drive in Boise, Idaho, and is part of a series of public museums and cultural attractions in Julia Davis Park. It is the permanent home of a growing collection of contemporary realism, mod ...

, Boise, Idaho *

Columbus Museum of Art The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (its name until 1978), it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio. The museum collect ...

, Columbus, Ohio *

Hallie Ford Museum of Art The Hallie Ford Museum of Art (HFMA) is the museum of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, United States. It is the third largest art museum in Oregon. Opened in 1998, the facility is across the street from the Oregon State Capital in downtow ...

, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon *

Henry Art Gallery The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it wa ...

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, Seattle, Washington *

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

, Atlanta, Georgia * Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, Florida *

Milwaukee Art Museum The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art. Location and Visit Located on the lakefront of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Art Museum is one of the largest art museu ...

, Milwaukee, Wisconsin *

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

, Madrid, Spain *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York, New York * National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia * New York Public Library, New York, New York * Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania *

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum beca ...

, Portland, Oregon * Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, District of Columbia *

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

, Tacoma, Washington *

, New York, New York *

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, New Haven, CT

References

James Castle Collection and Archive
* ''James Castle: A Retrospective'', Edited by Ann Percy, Yale University Press (2009) * ''James Castle: Show and Store'', Edited by Lynne Cook, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (2011)

External links

Official website of James Castle Collection and ArchiveSmithsonian American Art Museum exhibitionThe James Castle House
{{DEFAULTSORT:Castle, James Charles 1899 births 1977 deaths People from Boise County, Idaho Artists from Idaho Deaf artists Outsider artists 20th-century American artists American deaf people Self-taught artists