Mari Shaw

After experiencing early commercial and critical success, painter Thomas Chimes (1921–2009) became a hermit, spending the rest of his life in his hometown of Philadelphia, painting idea-based portraits like no others. Painter and Pataphysician Thomas Chimes excerpts 15 years of conversations between Chimes and art collector Mari Shaw about the arts, philosophy, alchemy, the unconscious, and living and dying courageously. Alfred Jarry, author of Ubu Roi and inventor of pataphysics, the science of exceptions, is the silent presence throughout these conversations: Chimes explored Jarry and his ideas in numerous paintings, and elaborated in detail on the artists Jarry influenced, including Duchamp, Picasso, Joyce and Artaud. With more than 80 color images, this book offers a glimpse into the thinking that spawned Chimes' famously idiosyncratic art—crucifixion paintings, metal boxes and white paintings—and his cycles of periodic reinvention.