Alison Hughes visits an exhibition of art by James Castle at Madrid's Queen Sofía Modern Art Museum and reports on a Spanish village that has painted itself blue to promote a Sony Corporation animated film about the smurfs.
From the Queen Sofía Museum's website - www.museoreinasofia.es : " Primitive, outsider, vernacular or visionary are some of the words used to define the complexity of James Castle (Idaho, 1900-1977).
The artist spent his life in rural Idaho, inventing his own artistic technique while creating totemic assemblage pieces, drawings and books resembling palimpsest.
This exhibition is a departure from the critical apparatus that (mis)interprets the art of the mentally ill and instead shows Castle's work as a fractured vision of the world" (23/06/11).
