There is also something to be said for a less belabored artistic approach, such as that favored by James Castle, the self-taught artist who is the focus of an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through  January 4. The show’s catalogue, James Castle, A Retrospective (Yale University Press; $60), collects the output of the deaf Idaho native who, in the 1950s and ’60s, used everything from cardboard boxes to his niece’s homework in his drawings and assemblages. As we stand at the threshold of a new—and, we hope, better—year, the barns and silos that Castle meticulously depicted using soot as his medium are a warming reminder that a phoenix can rise from the ashes.  
"Very Fine Print" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.