David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of works by James Castle (1899–1977). Organized in collaboration with the James Castle Collection and Archive LP, the exhibition offers an extensive look at Castle’s captivating visual world, which documents his home and surroundings in and around Boise and central Idaho through vivid drawings and assemblages.
An overview of the artist’s expansive practice, this exhibition explores how Castle, who was born deaf, found his primary means of expression through drawing and other forms of art making. Using sharpened sticks and soot from his family’s wood stove, which he mixed with his own saliva, Castle created elaborate and detailed drawings. These intricate works embody a sense of lived-in familiarity and display the artist’s preternatural understanding of perspective and spatial relations and his deep sensitivity to his environment. As John Beardsley notes, “What Castle found in this … place became the subject of acute visual attention and near photographic memory: minute details of the spaces he inhabited provided him with an inventory of images that he would repeat, transform, and manipulate in his art for the whole of his life. He remembered—and drew—the contours of every room, every bed and bureau, the patterns of wallpaper, the exteriors of houses and barns and other outbuildings, adjacent roads, fences, and fields.… Castle was able to recall the exact ridgelines of a mountain visible from his childhood home and replicate it in drawing after drawing.” 1
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1 John Beardsley, “Introduction,” in James Castle: Memory Palace (Boise: James Castle Collection and Archive LP; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), p. 22.
Image: James Castle, Untitled (studio/studio), n.d. (detail).
James Castle sitting in wheelbarrow, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by Bob Beach. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle sitting in wheelbarrow, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by Bob Beach. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle (1899–1977), who was born deaf, found his primary means of expression through drawing and other forms of art making. This exhibition, a recent New York Times Critic’s Pick , offers an extensive view into the self-taught artist’s captivating visual world, which documents his home and surroundings in and around Boise and central Idaho through vivid drawings and assemblages. The works in this exhibition are all drawn from the James Castle Collection and Archive LP.
“To the best of our knowledge, he remained unable (or chose not) to read, write, speak, lip-read, or otherwise communicate via conventional forms of language for the rest of his life.… By adulthood he had adopted a daily routine centered on his art that would change little in the course of decades.”
—Nicholas R. Bell, director of Glenbow Museum
James Castle as young boy in Garden Valley, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
James Castle as young boy in Garden Valley, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Castle was raised on a small farm outside of Boise, Idaho, as the fifth of seven surviving children and the son of postmasters who worked from the living room. He began drawing around the age of seven.
The Castle family moved from their Garden Valley farm in 1923 and ultimately settled on a five-acre plot of land outside of Boise, where the artist lived in his family’s home, then an old shed, and later, in a private trailer on the property.
The artist’s family home and surrounding landscape became a lifelong source of inspiration, galvanizing a prolific body of drawings, collages, and constructions made through found materials and with homemade tools and invented techniques.
Former Castle family barn, Garden Valley, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Former Castle family barn, Garden Valley, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Garden Valley, Idaho. Photo by the Beach family. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Garden Valley, Idaho. Photo by the Beach family. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
James Castle, Boise, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
James Castle, Boise, Idaho. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Castle shed, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by the Castle family. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
Castle shed, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by the Castle family. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
Castle shed, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by the Castle family. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
Castle shed, Boise, Idaho, 1950s. Photo by the Castle family. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
Castle made elaborate and detailed drawings using sharpened sticks and soot from his family’s wood stove, which he mixed with his own saliva as a binder.
Castle’s tools. Photo by Cate Brigden. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Castle’s tools. Photo by Cate Brigden. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
“What Castle found in this … place became the subject of acute visual attention and near photographic memory: minute details of the spaces he inhabited provided him with an inventory of images that he would repeat, transform, and manipulate in his art for the whole of his life. He remembered—and drew—the contours of every room, every bed and bureau, the patterns of wallpaper, the exteriors of houses and barns and other outbuildings, adjacent roads, fences, and fields.… Castle was able to recall the exact ridgelines of a mountain visible from his childhood home and replicate it in drawing after drawing.”
—John Beardsley, Oberlander Prize curator
Castle incorporated color into many of his drawings using watercolor, crayon, laundry bluing, and myriad other materials—including advertisements or tissue paper mixed with his own saliva—to create washes of color that give the works a dreamlike, surreal quality.
“Castle is looking at really what’s in front of him, what’s around him; it’s almost like the drawings show us him going into the world, him looking at the world, him observing the world, and in some cases, the perspective is very unusual.… There’s none of that stuff you’d associate with the conventions of art.”
—John Yau, poet and art critic, in the film James Castle: Portrait of an Artist
James Castle sitting in front of his trailer, family on patio, Boise, Idaho, 1974. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
James Castle sitting in front of his trailer, family on patio, Boise, Idaho, 1974. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Castle’s abstracted color-wash paintings often featured small houses that his family came to describe as “dream homes,” reflecting the artist’s desire for a space of his own.
In 1962, the family used proceeds from Castle’s art sales to purchase him a trailer, where he’d live for the rest of his life.
Several of Castle’s mixed-media constructions and other sculptural works are also featured in the exhibition. Using twine at times to sew together disparate scraps of found and cut cardboard and paper, Castle fashioned figural forms and objects that include chairs, baby carriages, birds, and architectural elements.
James Castle workspace in his 1950s model Cozy Cottage Trailer, 1963. Photo by Jack McLarty. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle workspace in his 1950s model Cozy Cottage Trailer, 1963. Photo by Jack McLarty. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle at workspace in his shed, Boise, Idaho, c. 1955. Photo by Joe Beach. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle at workspace in his shed, Boise, Idaho, c. 1955. Photo by Joe Beach. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
“In some very real way, his isolation is actually the truth that we all embody but to some degree we are able to deny.”
—John Yau
Castle stored his drawings, handmade books, and ephemera in small boxes and bundles that he carefully assembled and wrapped in paper or fabric and bound with twine. These small containers and art capsules were stored throughout his family’s property—buried in the dirt floors and lining the rafters of the sheds around the farm—reflecting both their importance to him and his desire to protect the artwork stored inside them.
Examples of James Castle’s bundles. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
Examples of James Castle’s bundles. Courtesy James Castle Collection and Archive LP
“The wedding of his attentive, mysteriously somber vision and the burnished physicality of his materials yields objects of haunting, deeply moving presence.”
—Ken Johnson, art critic
James Castle and sisters looking at a painting at Boise Gallery of Art (now Boise Art Museum), 1963. Photo by Idaho Statesman. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
James Castle and sisters looking at a painting at Boise Gallery of Art (now Boise Art Museum), 1963. Photo by Idaho Statesman. Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Boise State University
Though he shared his art with his family, friends, and visitors to his home, Castle would not exhibit his work publicly until he was in his early fifties. Then, his nephew Robert Beach, who was a student at what is now the Pacific Northwest College of Art, brought Castle’s drawings to the attention of his professors, resulting in his first exhibition.
Installation view, The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo by Francesco Galli. © Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia – ASAC
Installation view, The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo by Francesco Galli. © Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia – ASAC
Installation view, Untitled: The Art of James Castle, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 2014
Installation view, Untitled: The Art of James Castle, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 2014
Installation view, Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017. Photo by Ron Amstutz. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Installation view, Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017. Photo by Ron Amstutz. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Installation view, Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2018. Photo by Rob Shelley
Installation view, Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2018. Photo by Rob Shelley
Installation view, James Castle: A Retrospective, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008
Installation view, James Castle: A Retrospective, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008
“An energizing presentation of the artist’s landscapes, interiors and sculptural objects at David Zwirner Gallery lets visitors enter his secret universe.”
—John Vincler, The New York Times
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