Ron Silliman’s recent post on the current James Castle exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art alerted me to the work of this fascinating artist. It’s tantalising – I obviously can’t get to the show from Sydney, and I know so little about him, but Silliman’s comment certainly made me look at his work around the web:
Apparently deaf from birth and unable to read or even speak, James Castle turned out to be one of the great American artists of the 20th century. His galleries and those of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers are what’s currently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the same spaces that will be gorged with viewers of Cezanne come late February. Frankly, they should be there now.
And in a statement that really made me take notice:
I think every visual poet in the world would want to consider the vision of this man for whom language seems to have been essentially visual, as distinct from semantic.
That’s significant, coming from Silliman, a poet so deeply concerned with the place of language in psyche and life. And I hear it as a call for me to take my attempts in this area (visual language) further. I’ve found it challenging to make satisfying visual/text works, having experimented with it (in linocuts) from time to time. A project for next year, to look again at the difficult crossover between the visual and the semantic!
So coming back to the man in question, and a lovely work from the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition site:
James Castle
Man in red between two giant chickens (date unknown)
The medium for this work is poetically listed as “Blue, red, and green washes with soot-and-spit stick-applied lines on thin cardboard faced with off-white paper with selectively roughened surface (from commercially printed food carton [BECK'S MORNING FRESH BAKERIES / Morning FRESH DONUTS])”.
Looking around on the web, I came across this little work in soot and spit, one that offers me a haunting intimate reflection on the quotidian:
James Castle
Untitled (0479.40), Not dated
found paper, soot
6 1/4” x 8”
(Gallery Paule Anglim has this and other wonderful images of works by Castle.)
Finally, a nice point in a well-considered post on James Castle by Tyrus Clutter:
I suggest that in Castle’s case we should be considered the outsiders. We exist outside of his closed system. We are deciphering his messages, his language, that we cannot wholly comprehend. This makes for work that is not static. It compels us to come back again and again.
Addendum: Lots more on James Castle (including images and a Village Voice article) at Greg Kucera Gallery.
