Thomas Chimes: Adventures in 'Pataphysics

by Michael R. Taylor

Thomas Chimes (b. 1921) is one of Philadelphia’s most important living artists. Tracing the stylistic evolution of Chimes’s idiosyncratic art, this handsome book presents a long-overdue survey of his remarkable five-decade career: canvases combining landscape imagery with symbols such as crucifixes (late 1950s–60s); mixed-media constructions set within finely crafted metal boxes (late 1960s–early 1970s); his best-known works, a series of 48 intimate sepia-toned panel portraits of 19th- and 20th-century writers and artists that are placed within oversized wood frames (1973–78); and the enigmatic “white paintings” of the past two decades.
The book reveals how Chimes has found inspiration in the writings of Antonin Artaud, James Joyce, and especially Alfred Jarry, the iconoclastic playwright and novelist whose invented “’Pataphysics”––the “science of imaginary solutions”––has provided the artist with a seemingly inexhaustible font of imagery.  Taylor explores the links between Chimes’s work and that of contemporaries such as Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, and Nancy Spero, as well as important predecessors like Vincent van Gogh, Marcel Duchamp, and fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins.

267 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2007

About the author

Michael R. Taylor is chief curator and deputy director for art and education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This monograph on the late Philadelphia artist Thomas Chimes accompanied a retrospective at the PMA two years ago. At the time Chimes was still living in working in Philly. He was born here but left for New York in the 1950's, and then after achieving some success in the '60's moved back home, where he worked indefatigably until his death earlier this year.

Almost his entire ouevre revolves around his love of some of the icons of the 20th c. avant garde - Alfred Jarry, Joyce, Satie, Artaud, etc. - being particulary inspired by Jarry's Pataphysics, that wonderful quasi-scientific philosophy of anarchy and humor that has had a significant underground-type influence on a lot of subsequent art.

His most famous works, and probably his best, are small portraits based on photographs of his heroes. Executed in shades of brown they look like holy relics from a cache of treasures unearthed in an attic:



Chimes is a meticulous craftsman in a number of media, including some vey unique metal constructions that look like silver side panels for functioning surrealist machines.



But as admirable as he is as a craftsman, it's his mind, sensibility, and singular interests that are the substance of his ouevre. In fact one entire room of the exhibit was dedicated to his collection of books and ephemera relating to pataphysics and the works of other artists who informed his lifelong quest for the marvelous. Chimes was a fascinating combination of serious intent and search for meaning, jokesterism, selfless homage, and loner obsessiveness.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

His portraits of famous men are mysterious and lovely.