Life is absurd and it is ludicrous to take it seriously – so says the philosophy behind an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
By: Ilene Dube
Alfred Jarry fans, rejoice: Your man has come home. The French poet, playwright (Ubu Roi), novelist and philosopher (1873-1907) has been reborn in an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Thomas Chimes: Adventures in ‘Pataphysics is a retrospective of the work of the Philadelphia-born artist who has spent much of his career perpetuating the thinking of Jarry, a forerunner to the theater of the absurd.
In 1964, Mr. Chimes’ brother-in-law gave him an edition of Evergreen Review, in which the artist first learned about Jarry and his invented science of ‘pataphysics, defined by Jarry as "the science of imaginary solutions." It changed Mr. Chimes’ outlook on everything.
Fans of Thomas Eakins, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse will also find homage paid to their heroes here. In the extensive catalog accompanying the exhibit, curator Michael C. Taylor places Mr. Chimes closer to the statement of Duchamp "Where do we go from here? The great artist of tomorrow will go underground" than to Andy Warhol’s "In the future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes."
Mr. Chimes attended Warhol’s 1965 opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and was influenced by the Pop artist, and indeed Mr. Chimes enjoyed his moments of fame when his paintings were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art and exhibited in New York galleries, but he subsequently went "underground," returning home to Philadelphia where he could work quietly, exploring his interior world, developing his own iconography and finding his artistic path.
That path can be broken up into four phases, and the museum has divided the exhibit into four corresponding sections:
Mr. Chimes’ early crucifixion paintings: These are not religious paintings, but focus on the cross as a visual symbol. It all began while Mr. Chimes was staring at the blank canvas, awaiting "divine" inspiration, and observed the cross formed by the support stretchers behind the canvas. This gave structure to his abstract paintings that followed, with further influences from van Gogh’s use of color and Matisse’s Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominican Nuns at Vence, near Nice in southern France, with its drawings of the Stations of the Cross. (Matisse was a non-believer as well.)
Mr. Chimes grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church, and his crosses may have partly grown out of this upbringing, but his later works display a nihilistic outlook. "Mural," painted in 1962 for the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Fla., contains crucifixes that seem devoid of religious symbolism, but a study for the mural definitely depicts a human, Christ-like figure at the cross.
"He wasn’t interested in Christ as a symbol of belief but as a metaphor for the struggle of an artist in society," says Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Chimes was highly influenced by the 1951 book The Last Temptation of Christ, in which author Nikos Kazantzakis challenges traditional Christian dogma by presenting Jesus as a fusion of God and man, rejecting martyrdom in favor of a natural human existence on earth with marriage, family and old age, according to Mr. Taylor.
In "Crucifix 3," the artist includes a mathematical equation, letting the images flow. "The visual artist should not illustrate an idea but let it work itself out," Mr. Chimes told Mr. Taylor in a videotaped interview.
The artist’s metal boxes that evoke Joseph Cornell’s boxes: During World War II, Mr. Chimes trained to become an aircraft mechanic for the U.S. Army Air Forces, and learned to make cables and weld aluminum. These skills were put to use in the metal boxes that are considered commentary on the austerity of Minimalism, as well as a reflection on the ideas of cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan. They also contain highly erotic imagery.
"He saw Minimalism as lacking humor, and it was the ’60s and he was feeling the liberation of the ’60s and the need to express it in art," says Mr. Taylor, adding that the boxes are "exquisite." Mr. Chimes, who had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts and the Art Students League in New York, had experienced Abstract Expressionism; he’d studied with Robert Rauschenberg, been part of the New York art scene, and didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Jackson Pollack, Barnett Newman and Donald Judd. "America was taking over from Europe as the innovative place for art, but Tom wanted to be his own man," says Mr. Taylor. "He was always looking for something new and didn’t want to repeat himself."
During the years 1973 to 1978, Mr. Chimes embarked on a project to create 48 panel portraits of turn-of-the-century philosophers, poets, literary and artistic figures all tormented souls. He worked exclusively from photographs, recreating them as if sepia tones on wood panels, in which the grain of the wood becomes integral with the image. He also made the wood frames that are contiguous to the panels; these were inspired by Eakins, whose work he admired in the museum while growing up in Philadelphia. The portrait subjects include Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rrose Sélavy (the name Marcel Duchamp took when posing as a woman for Man Ray).
"In another time, Chimes thinks he might have been incarcerated in an asylum," says Mr. Taylor. "The avant-garde paid a heavy price. Jarry led a debauched life (with drug and alcohol abuse)."
The "white paintings" are a stark contrast to the dark wood panels, and are made using only titanium white and Mars black. The images, covered over with many washes of white paint, appear shrouded, mysterious. Mr. Chimes entered this phase of work shortly after his divorce and worked large at first, but when his aching knees forced him to give up his studio in a walk-up brownstone, he began working on three-inch-square panels that can be assembled as a grid.
Both the wood panels and the white paintings continue to be influenced by if not obsessed with Jarry and his writings.
Mr. Chimes, 85, lives a spartan existence in his home on Washington Square, according to Mr. Taylor, who has befriended the artist and has lunch with him every week. "He lives with his books and no superfluous possessions."
At the center of the exhibit, Mr. Taylor has created a room based on Mr. Chimes’ library, with many of his books by and about Jarry on display in a glass case. In the pages of these books we see the photographs and illustrations from which Mr. Chimes’ dreams grew to create his own imagery. There is a recording of Mr. Chimes reading from Jarry’s Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, ‘Pataphysician (published posthumously; in a way, Mr. Chimes seems to have taken over the mission of the author): "Life is absurd and it is ludicrous to take it seriously… only the comic is serious… God is, by definition, without dimension… God is the shortest distance between zero and infinity… Plus and minus God is the shortest distance between zero and infinity… God, being without dimension, is not a line…"
In this room, Mr. Chimes’ half-century obsession with Jarry can be seen in all four periods of his work. What were you doing during our nation’s bicentennial? Mr. Chimes was painting "Bicentennial Jarry" in which the writer stands with a sword in his hand against a backdrop of swords on the wall. The year 1776 is painted on one side of him, 1876 on the other. Mr. Chimes subsequently painted this image much larger, zooming in just on the figure. Finally and still in the year of the bicentennial he paints just the head of his hero, titled "Ubu." Jarry has become Ubu, the grotesque character he had written about Ubu was fat, stupid, greedy, cowardly and evil. Jarry, ether addicted, died young. The panel he’s painted on here is cracked wood, cracked so bad, in fact, Mr. Chimes thought at first he couldn’t use it. "By then, Jarry was a cracked man," says Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Chimes was obsessed with artists and writers who suffered from inner battles with demons, and suffered a bout with depression between the end of his time in New York and his return to Philadelphia. "Tom views madness as something society has invented to deal with people bringing forth troubling realities," says Mr. Taylor. "All these people who’ve suffered to create his pantheon of like-minded individuals (in the wood panel portraits) were neglected, poor, imprisoned or incarcerated in asylums, but what they’ve left has touched the soul of all of us."
Another recurrent image throughout Mr. Chimes’ work is that of le Momo, a creation of Antonin Artaud, another French poet, playwright, actor and director who went mad and was committed to an asylum. When commissioned to illustrate the cover for a book about Artaud, Mr. Chimes learned that Artaud was cofounder of the Theatre Alfred Jarry in Paris in 1926, and became fascinated, especially because both he and Artaud shared Greek heritage and were first-born sons of powerful women.
Le Momo in Marseilles, the word is slang for simpleton or jester was Artaud’s alter ego, and Mr. Chimes drew him as half fish, half bird, a streamlined head with swept-back hair, suggestive of a bird of prey, or like the winged cap of Hermes who crossed the borders between both worlds. This image appears in the metal boxes, particularly in the drawings of sexual images, and right through to the white paintings.
In fact, in the white paintings, Faustroll, Jarry, le Momo and Mr. Chimes all blend into one being. There are also paintings of Niagara Falls, French composer Eric Satie and James Joyce, covered by a blanket of snow, under ice. There are elements of Philadelphia, his beloved home, such as the Schuylkill River and Memorial Hall (a dome, similar in shape to le Momo, and morphing into le Momo in the white paintings).
"To get to the future, you go to the past. To get to the past, you go to the future," Mr. Chimes wrote in 1975 on the panel "Alfred Jarry (Memory)." The painting appears to be signed twice, once by A. Jarry in 1973, and again by Mr. Chimes in 1898. It also contains a geometric diagram, under which is scrawled "memory." It’s as if the artist is saying that he and Jarry are one, a continuation from the past to the future.
Faustroll was to have traveled "From Paris to Paris by Sea" in a skiff or a sieve. In the final work, "Untitled (Finnegans Wake)," comprised of three-inch square white paintings, it all fits together a portrait of Pa Ubu, inventor of ‘pataphysics, Faustroll, Jarry, le Momo, helmets, crucifixes, bicycles, entropy, trope like a key or a guide to the artist’s life, influences and work. This final piece was inspired by the last line of James Joyce’s final novel: "A way a long a last a loved a long the."
Thomas Chimes: Adventures in ‘Pataphysics is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 26th Street, Phila., through May 6. Museum hours: Tues.-Thurs., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 10 a.m.-8:45 p.m. Admission costs $12, $9 62 and over, $8 students, under 12 free, Sun. pay what you wish. For information, call (215) 763-8100. On the Web: www.philamuseum.org

