The Imaginary Solutions of Thomas Chimes

A Visit with the Great Philadelphian Artist

Our visit with Thomas Chimes, one of Philadelphia's most important contemporary artists, begins at the Philadelphia Museum whose collection inspired him as a schoolboy to become an artist. Here he was drawn to Thomas Eakins, a fellow Philadelphian, and to Duchamp and Van Gogh. Anne d'Harnoncourt, Director of the museum, joins Chimes to revisit the galleries of these influential artists and to "compare notes" with Chimes.

Just as many other American artists, Chimes spent time in Paris and discovered writers such as Antonin Artaud, James Joyce and especially Alfred Jarry, who became important sources of inspiration. Alfred Jarry's writings on pataphysics dominated Chimes' work for two decades. Chimes's portraits of Jarry and his intellectual peers are the core of his idiosyncratic work as an artist. Michael Taylor, curator of Chimes' retrospective exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum, questions him on his progress from his beginnings to his present work.