tachistn.adj.
/ˈtaʃɪst/ Art.† 1. One who paints by juxtaposing small patches of unmixed colour. Obsolete.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > late 19th and 20th centuries > [noun] > neo-Impressionism or pointillism > artist
pointillist1891
tachist1891
neo-impressionist1892
divisionist1901
1891 Academy 6 June 544/3 ‘Impressionists’, ‘tâchistes’, ‘plein airistes’, and ‘pointillistes’, to use the jargon of the day.
1909 C. E. Hallé Notes from Painter's Life xi. 234 We have even schools which take their names from the manner of using the brush. We have ‘Tachists’, ‘Vibrists’, and Heaven knows how many more.
2.
a. One who practises tachism (see below).
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > late 19th and 20th centuries > [noun] > action painting or tachism > artist
abstract expressionist1929
action painter1952
tachist1954
1954 New Yorker 4 Dec. 99/1 Negatively, it can be said that the unknowns are certainly not Cubists and not tachistes, and not Mondrianesque or Braqueish either.
1957 Observer 3 Nov. 14/6 The ‘tache’ is the mark the painter makes on the canvas with his paint-loaded brush, and an emphasis on the freedom and spontaneity of the creative act itself and on extreme sensitivity towards the actual materials of painting is characteristic of the tachists.
1960 Guardian 22 Apr. 9/4 The young English tachistes for whom freedom is an engrossing obsession.
b. attributive or as adj.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > late 19th and 20th centuries > [adjective] > tachist
abstract expressionist1936
tachist1955
1955 New Yorker 31 Dec. 40/3 The car, maybe the vegetables, and certainly the hope of sharing as an artist in the dubious kudos have all been attributed to a tachiste French painter.
1956 Archit. Rev. 120 186/1 In his delectable paintings of trout hovering in light-stained water he uses tachist techniques with a consummate professionalism.
1966 ‘H. MacDiarmid’ Company I've Kept iii. 103 People should not look at his [sc. William Johnstone's] paintings with any preconceived ideas and seek for elements in them which can be labelled..‘tachist’, and the like.
1972 R. Quilty Tenth Session i. 123 An aggressive twenty square feet of tachist canvas.
1982 S. Spender China Diary 118 The Western artist looks at the model... The first object of his attention is usually the image, even if this is abstract (except for tachiste painting).
Derivatives
ˈtachism n. [compare French tachisme (also used)] a style of modern painting in which spots or dabs of colour are arranged in apparently random manner to evoke an emotion, scene, etc.; cf. action painting n. at action n. Compounds 1.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > period, movement, or school of art > late 19th and 20th centuries > [noun] > action painting or tachism
abstract expressionism1922
action art1930
action painting1952
tachism1956
art autre1957
1956 Archit. Rev. 120 333/1 The same Cézanne picture, considered simply as a painted surface, is one of the finest examples of ‘tachism’ in the history of art.
1957 Times 28 Nov. 3/4 The Canadian artist, Mr. Austin Cooper can claim to have been among the first in this country to practise what is now generally known as tachisme.
1960 J. Cohen Chance, Skill & Luck ii. 42 Nealces may deserve to be described by the historian of art as the founder of Tachism.
1978 Jrnl. Royal Soc. Arts 126 696/1 Abstract expressionism and tachisme, dead on time, and an explosion of hard-edged colour, produced, he told me, under the razzamataz influence of New York.
1979 E. H. Gombrich Sense of Order ii. 62 Any number of Ph.D. theses await being written about the influence of Cubism, of Tachism, of Op or Pop art on fabrics and wall paper.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
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n.adj.1891