Art + Design

Provenance:

The Artist.

By family descent.

Private Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Note:

Thomas Chimes held a particular fascination with the character of Dr. Faustroll, created by the French writer Alfred Jarry, who became a recurring subject in his work. Faustroll represented to Chimes an unconventional thinker, someone navigating a world free from the constraints of traditional logic. An enigmatic figure, Faustroll is central to the present painting, Faustroll Smaller Than Faustroll, 1987, although the image is taken directly from a photograph of Alfred Jarry riding a bicycle, conflating the fictional character and his author. The painting, like most of Chimes’ major works, beckons the viewers to question reality, embrace the irrational, and explore the boundaries of the human imagination.

Lot Essay:

Freeman’s Hindman is honored to present a selection of Thomas Chimes’ work, spanning the artist’s career and representing the major touchstones of his artistic production. Chimes’ practice often blended elements of Surrealism and Abstraction, while exploring a deeply personal aesthetic, rooted in philosophical and literary theories and motifs, and engaging the irrational and the absurd. Creating paintings, drawings, etchings and sculpture, the artist often depicted dream-like landscapes, geometric shapes, and enigmatic symbols, challenging viewers to investigate the boundaries of reality with him. Simultaneously embodying complexity and simplicity, Chimes work continues to resonate with collectors and art historians alike.

Thomas Chimes was born in Philadelphia in 1921 and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with artists Daniel Garber, Henry McCarter and Francis Speight, before attending the Art Students League, and eventually completing a philosophy degree at Columbia University. After service in the US Army Air Forces until 1945, Chimes lived in New York and was involved in the gallery scene at the time, though quickly felt the pressure of conforming to the Abstract Expressionist mode became too confining. After a trip to Europe to visit his family’s homeland of Greece, and a months-long stay in Paris, Chimes returned to the United States and decided to permanently relocate back to Philadelphia where he still had family. While living in New York and traveling abroad, he became increasingly interested in Modernism and Abstraction, but felt that many works were too emotionally detached and self-referential. He felt pulled to establish his authentic voice and personal style, referencing his lived reality and particular time, something he could better accomplish in Philadelphia, away from the competitive New York art scene.

Over the course of the rest of his life and career, Chimes made the pursuit of that authentic voice his work, reinventing himself in the process as he moved through different phases. As Michael Taylor summarized in his seminal exhibition catalogue for the retrospective exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007, Adventures in ‘Pataphysics, Chimes embodied “the notion of the artist as a prophet or seer who through his sensitivity and extreme clairvoyance is able to teach us about the void.” Chimes’ sensitivity to his time and cultural milieu expressed itself in different modes, which Taylor outlined as: Crucifixion Paintings, Metal Boxes, Panel Portraits and White Paintings. Freeman’s Art + Design auction on August 19 presents engaging works from each of these groups, elucidating the extraordinary depth of the artist’s work throughout his life. While Chimes’ literary and philosophical source material can appear esoteric and conceptual, his paintings remain personal, authentic and enlightening.