Into the ‘Memory Palace’
Art historian John Beardsley, of Rappahannock, publishes the definitive volume on the works of self-taught artist James Castle
Deaf from an early age, self-taught artist James Castle rendered many of his drawings from memory. Castle, born in Garden Valley, Idaho in 1899, never learned to read, write or speak. But from his near photographic memory, he constructed extraordinarily detailed depictions of landscapes, architecture and domestic interiors using materials like soot and saliva and laundry bluing. And now, 44 years a er his death in 1977, in collaboration with Yale University Press and the James Castle Collection, Rappahannock art historian John Beardsley has published a de nitive volume on Castle’s life’s work.
“There are so many reasons to be interested in [Castle],” Beardsley says. “Art historical reasons, questions of representation and style and materials and media; there are the sort of questions of disability and what’s the relationship between creativity and deafness in his case; there are questions about memory. Why do we remember things? Is it neurological? Is it genetic? And why is Castle’s memory so profound?”
Because the artist never dated any of his drawings, Beardsley says, it’s next to impossible to approach Castle’s work conventionally — that is, in chronological order.
Instead, Beardsley’s book, “Memory Palace,” takes the reader through Castle’s work thematically, the way one might tour the rooms of a house — or, if you will, a castle. The book meditates on both memory and remembering: how do we remember? Are our memories factual or
ctional or a combination of both? And in Castle’s case, did his deafness enhance his capacity for memorizing detail?
“I think his deafness can be seen in the context of an idea that’s current in disability studies called ‘deaf gain,’ in which what are perceived as disabilities actually contribute to the development of other capabilities — visual and spatial and tactile capabilities among them,” Beardsley says.
“I think he exempli es this idea of deaf gain. That deafness at least in terms of his art wasn’t a disability but was actually something that may well have contributed to his capacity for spatial thinking and for representation and for memory.”
Castle’s tremendous memory also makes it di cult to know for certain how he evolved as an artist, since he experimented with so many di erent styles and techniques.
“You can tell a certain amount from the visual evidence but … you can’t tell whether there was a development from more realistic to more abstract or if he was working in all of those modes simultaneously,” Beardsley says.
“I tend to think the latter, that he was incredibly inventive and had a very experimental approach to materials and styles and so forth. So I think he was doing everything at once. At the same time there is a way in which the work seems to loosen up and that might be something that happens later in his life.”
Everything that art historians know about Castle’s life, Beardsley notes, came from family narratives and archival interviews with those that knew him. And while that poses a signi cant challenge to interpreting Castle’s work, it also presents an opportunity.
“We tend to look at art from the perspective of what the artist intended and we don’t know in this case what the artist intended. And so that leaves the art much more open to our projections. So some people look at those empty rooms and think, how sad, how lonely. Other people look at them and think, wow, what a detailed exploration of space and they don’t attribute any emotional content to it,” Beardsley says.
In addition to the realistic drawings of the Castle family homestead and the property in Boise where he lived with his sister for more than 40 years as an adult, Castle also experimented with other media. He constructed gures and objects out of colored paper, twine, gunny sacks, bits of glass and other found materials, o en playing around the limits of two dimensions and three, constructing two-dimensional cardboard silhouettes of chairs, bowls, pitchers and even clothes.
And despite his apparent lifelong illiteracy, he made dozens of books exploring letters and written language, demonstrating a fascination with text.
“I think that there are so many di erent aspects to the work, that’s why so many people are drawn to it,” Beardsley says.
“Some people are drawn to the language works [or] they might be interested in surrealism and there are these odd juxtapositions of gures with objects. In a way there’s something for everyone in Castle.”