Tachisme was France's answer to Abstract Expressionism in the 40's and 50's. The word Tachisme was named after the French word for stain or drip and this aesthetic statement is apparent in the paintings—which are dripping with color. The compositions look to have suddenly been splashed across the canvas, very similarly to action painting.

This style of painting also has close roots to lyrical abstraction, and like lyrical abstraction was formed as a response to the calculated, formulaic approach of geometric abstraction.

The result was fluid, spontaneous art derived from the philosophy that art should be just that. While this term is used to describe most all French or even European art during American abstract expressionism, it is strikingly different to abstract expressionism. There is a softness in Tachisme that is not present in the raw abstraction of American art.

Critics have called the art sensual, suave and only concerned with handling the beautiful. Because of this, I think that a reproduction of a Tachisme era piece of art makes a very romantic gift. Whether for a guy or girl, a birthday or a just because Tachisme captures the essence of beauty, of sensual movement and all without being too obvious or cheesy.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Starring: Charlton Heston, Rex Harrison

Release: 1965

Through the lens of modern art history, watching The Agony and the Ecstasy is a strange experience. Centered on Michelangelo's relationship with Pope Julius II, for whom he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the film purports to present historical accuracy, but just as often as it pleases, it disappoints. Ordinarily, I wouldn't get too offended by a filmmaker's historical revisionism, but when a film sets itself up as a historical record, it opens itself up to those criticisms. The Agony and the Ecstasy tries to blend its fictional representation into fact – so much so that the film opens with a twelve minutes documentary about Michelangelo's birth and early tutelage under Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, showing chronological facts of his life alongside interpretations of his sculpted works. From this sort of prologue, the film transitions to footage of the marble quarries in Carrara, not as they existed in 1965 but as they existed in Michelangelo's day, and then to the plot of the film. It establishes the film as a continuation of the established facts.