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Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In recent years one of the challenges undertaken by the Museo Reina Sofia has been to problematize some of the labels that have been assigned to artists and their practices throughout the twentieth century. Pigeonholes such as Outsider Art Art Brut or Naive Art serve to categorize artistic proposals yet pay little or no attention to their profound complexity. The Museo Reina Sofia is taking steps to eliminate boundaries such as the sepa- ration between what we call the “fine” arts and popular artistic practices. It is essen- tial to contribute to an art history that is not presented from a dominant position. Much has been written about artists such as James Castle who have been marginal- ized within the traditional art historical discourse. Art historians have frequently assumed that self-taught artists lack commitment to their production and suffer from a lack of self-awareness. Castle was an artist with no academic training he was profoundly deaf and never learned to read or write or to use sign language. Recent publications have focused more on his ability to overcome his communication prob- lems than on exploring the role that his affliction played in the works he produced. Once it has been established that Castle searched for a means of communication once that first hurdle is overcome the need to analyze the transcendence of his discourse-the values and deep meanings that emerge in his work-persists. For example as Briony Fer states in this catalogue Castle’s use of discarded boxes packaging materials and other printed matter must cease to be interpreted as a practical limitation and instead be regarded as a fundamental part of his work taking into account that he always expressly refused to utilize blank white paper and commercial art supplies. We must understand Castle’s work within the same param- eters that we do the work of other artists. We would find it unacceptable to analyze Picasso’s or Duchamp’s use of found objects merely as a consequence of a need for materials. We must try to leave behind the dark temptation to base our interpreta- tion on his physical limitations and his lack of academic training. This example is key to understanding the impetus behind the presentation of a major exhibition of the work of an artist such as Castle in a museum devoted to moderti and contempo- rary art. It is perhaps the appropriate space to unveil many of the subtexts that un- derlie (literally in Castle’s case) an oeuvre that since the artist’s death in the 1970 has demanded to be read. (MP)