书 名：James Castle: Memory Palace/詹姆斯·卡斯尔：记忆宫殿
作 者：John Beardsley
出 版：Yale University Press，2021年
装 帧：精装 , 280页

语 种：英语

尺 寸：24*27.9 cm

一位非凡艺术家的迷人新视角：失聪让他拥有了敏锐的视觉感知力和近乎摄影般的记忆力

自学成才的艺术家詹姆斯·卡斯尔（James Castle，1899-1977）主要以精细描绘的家庭内部和农场场景，以及用烟灰和唾液绘制的奇幻人物、动物和纸板及缝制纸张制成的建筑构造而闻名。卡斯尔出生于爱达荷州的一个农户家庭，他的视觉世界由看似普通的主题变化构成：乡村风景、房屋、谷仓和外屋；有闭门和开门的室内场景、床铺、五斗柜、瓷砖地板和精细图案的壁纸；以及食品、燃料和火柴的彩色插图广告复制品。

卡斯尔是一位失聪的艺术家，据大多数记载，他从未学会阅读、写作或说话。在这本非凡的著作中，作者约翰·比尔兹利（John Beardsley）探讨了这些局限如何促使他发展出非凡的记忆力，这种能力使他能够创作出大量独具智慧的艺术作品。比尔兹利仿佛通过一系列房间（一座“记忆宫殿”）来追踪卡斯尔的作品——包括室内、室外、物品、书籍和文字——重现了许多此前未知的作品，并引用了首次从詹姆斯·卡斯尔收藏和档案馆中公开的其他文献。

A fascinating new look at an extraordinary artist whose deafness led to an acute visual awareness and near photographic memory

Self-taught artist James Castle (1899–1977) is primarily known for soot and saliva drawings of meticulously rendered domestic interiors and farm scenes, along with fantastical figures, animals, and architectural constructions made of cardboard and stitched paper. Castle was born into a family of homesteaders in Idaho, and his visual world comprised variations of seemingly ordinary subjects: rural landscapes, houses, barns, and outbuildings; interiors with closed and open doors, beds, bureaus, tile floors, and minutely patterned wallpaper; and color copies of illustrated advertisements for food, fuel, and matches.

Castle was a deaf artist who by most accounts never learned to read, write, or speak. In this remarkable book, author John Beardsley discusses how these limitations led to the development of an extraordinary memory, an ability that enabled him to create a large number of distinctly intelligent artworks. Beardsley follows Castle’s work as if through a series of rooms (a “Memory Palace”)—interiors, exteriors, objects, books, and words—reproducing many previously unknown works and referencing other documents made available for the first time from the James Castle Collection and Archive.