Exceptional Works: James Castle

“Brave is the scholar who dares to take on the vast, endlessly fascinating, highly elusive art of James Castle.”

—Innis Howe Shoemaker, curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art

James Castle, Boise, Idaho, n.d. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive

This viewing room presents a striking sculptural work by James Castle. A figure composed from cardboard and paper sewn together and overlaid with ink and soot, this is a powerful example of the artist’s work with mixed-media construction, and affirms the unique formal position of the figure in Castle’s art.

Largely unknown during his lifetime, James Castle (1899–1977) is now widely recognized for vivid drawings and sculptural works that document his home and surroundings in Boise, Idaho. His practice incorporates detailed soot drawings, colorful works on paper, and distinctive assemblages depicting everyday items—including the chair and door works also presented here.

James Castle

Untitled, n.d.

Soot, ink, and string on found paper

11 1/2 x 5 1/8 inches (29.2 x 13 cm)

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Castle, who was born deaf, found his primary means of expression through art making. In addition to his drawings, he fashioned forms and objects including people, chairs, birds, and architectural elements by sewing together found and cut cardboard and paper. In contrast with his two-dimensional works, which he readily showed to visitors, Castle seems to have kept these constructed objects more private.

These works highlight Castle’s sensitivity to his materials. He worked with irregular, thick paper, cardboard, and packaging materials that have significant volume and texture. These works at times exhibit a proto-cubist quality, as though the represented object or figure is being seen from multiple angles or perspectives.

The former Castle family barn, Garden Valley, Idaho. Image courtesy the James Castle Collection and Archive

“Figures and objects grant us the most immediate access to Castle’s imagination, although they only deepen the enigma of his work.”

—John Beardsley, art historian and curator

“It is clear that he was discriminating.… Using what was merely at hand is closely bound up with an intimate involvement with the particularity of his materials.”

—Briony Fer, art historian and writer

James Castle: A Retrospective, published on the occasion of the exhibition at Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008

“It is more accurate to describe these figures as a collection of forms rather than as distinct individuals.… Why did a consummate draftsman portray his figures this way?… This is more appropriately an opportunity to … recall Castle as a master manipulator of his genre—one eminently comfortable wading through layers of abstraction. Freedom to experiment was foundational to Castle’s situation as an artist.”

—Nicholas R. Bell, writer and curator

Ephemera from James Castle’s studio (detail). Image courtesy the James Castle Collection and Archive

An installation of works by James Castle, [L-R] Untitled (green door), n.d., Untitled, n.d., and Untitled (chair construction), n.d.

“Castle’s restless shifts between styles and modes that range from the naturalistic to the abbreviated, schematic, and abstract indicate a way of differentiating among modes of representation, and among means and methods of making, that is more akin to modernist and postmodern practices than to ways of working typical of autodidacts.”

—Lynne Cooke, writer and curator

James Castle's workspace with chair constructions in Cozy Cottage Trailer, 1963. Photo by Jack McLarty. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University

“There is a way in which Castle’s work recapitulates some of the history of twentieth-century art. Like the cubists … he experimented with collage. Like assemblage artists, he collected and utilized discarded materials. Like the Surrealists … he can be said to have practiced a kind of automatic creativity.”

—John Beardsley

James Castle

Untitled (chair construction), n.d.

Wood, shoelace, and string on found paper

36 x 14 x 1 inches (91.4 x 35.6 x 2.5 cm)

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James Castle, Untitled (chair construction), n.d. (detail, recto)

James Castle, Untitled (chair construction), n.d. (detail, verso)

“Common and ordinary things were used in uncommon ways to make extraordinary objects.… For me, this links him [Castle] with an American aesthetic in painting.… With what [Jackson] Pollock and [Willem] de Kooning were all about—turning painting into a kind of manual labor and appropriating tools from hardware stores.… Every object is specific.”

—Terry Winters, artist

James Castle

Untitled (green door), n.d.

Soot, color, and string on found paper

27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches (69.8 x 39.4 cm)

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James Castle, Untitled (green door), n.d. (detail, recto)

James Castle, Untitled (green door), n.d. (detail, verso)

James Castle, Untitled (green door), n.d. (detail, recto)

“His strategies—salvage, transcription, improvisation, recombination, abstraction—seem to be baked into the process of art making.… Castle was as embedded in modern American visual culture as any other artist of his time, perhaps even more so.”

—John Beardsley

Installation view, James Castle, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“It is not difficult to see why Castle has appealed to so many artists.… He worked at the far edge of the possibilities of art making.”

—Briony Fer

James Castle, Untitled, n.d. (detail, recto)

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