Synopses & Reviews
Thomas Chimes (b. 1921) is one of Philadelphiaand#8217;s most important living artists. Tracing the stylistic evolution of Chimesand#8217;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 1950sand#150;60s); mixed-media constructions set within finely crafted metal boxes (late 1960sand#150;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 (1973and#150;78); and the enigmatic
and#147;white paintingsand#8221; 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 and#147;and#8217;Pataphysicsand#8221;and#150;and#150;the and#147;science of imaginary solutionsand#8221;and#150;and#150;has provided the artist with a seemingly inexhaustible font of imagery.and#160; Taylor explores the links between Chimesand#8217;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.
About the Author
Michael R. Taylor is The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art.