Tachisme
タシスム / 1945–1960 / Style / Gestural Abstraction
A European abstraction named after the tache—the stain—that gives the leading role to the chance of touch and drip. Planned composition is abandoned; the very speed at which paint lands and flows becomes the order of the surface. Within Art Informel, the name that focuses on the swiftness of the gesture.
Accumulations of stains and drips / Marks of rapid gesture / Arrangements without a centre / Contrast with reserves of white ground
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Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Identity systems energised by authentic ink splashes and calligraphic speed · Title sequences and posters where a single fast gesture is the hero
- Type
- One quiet grotesque, small and stable, set against the moving marks
- Composition
- Off-centre clusters of gesture surrounded by generous white; no grid, only momentum
- Material
- Fluid ink and thinned paint that stains, drips and splashes on a white ground
- Caution
- Avoid retouching or composing the splash after the fact—corrected gestures lose the recorded speed that is the style's entire content.
- Further study
- The overlap in terminology with Art Informel / Gesture as a record of time / The debate comparing it with calligraphy