EXPERIMENT “TACHISME”

“Talking about tachists, they were “illegal” from the both colour and form point of view.” (Johannes Itten, “Color theory”)

Not only Itten, many others creative works researcherswhile talking about taschism works try not to speak much. Actually, this theme is also not about them, but can we really “forget” about the color. Having some knowledge, correlation of colors, even not correct, a human can hardly “switch off” these settings deliberately. You can try to copy a child’s drawings or “hand writing”, but you’ll have to look for some regularities, but without them now you can’t do anything.

Have the tachists made the color absolutely illegal? Maybe they have gained some success in it, but had they managed to neutrolizetotally human influence on the chosen colors? Maybe color pallete was in the hands of subconsciousness, who knows.

You may even throw a brick with colored edges, entrusting a chance with the choice of a color, but to draw a small picture, this brick must be thrown a great number of times. And what to do with gradations, won’t the subconsciousness use them?

So, the experiment. At first, make sure that your computer can be connected to a black-and-white TV set or if in the settings of a video display board/displey there is a scale “Saturation”. Surprisingly, on some monitors there are no such settings. Also you will need a graphics tablet, or some more convinient instrument, I’m writing it in the begginning of the twenty first century, not everything is invented yet.
Now let’s get to the “invention of a bicycle”, because the absence of colorvision as a defect of eyesight hadn’t prevented some people form becoming painters, and also people say that donkeys see everything in grey, but even they are ready to draw pictures with their tales.

So, at first, these painters can read the name of a color on tubes of paint, and second, they will never see in color what they had painted.
This experiment is more refined. Firstly, choose a graphocs edit. And it suits ideally to our experiment. or, I advise you to use Corel Painter. In this programme there is a very convenient color “mixer”*. Swith off “Saturation” of the monitor chock-a-block. Now ask someone to change colors in the “mixer” * accidentically and out of your view. It will be even better, if you haven’t seen this program never before.

This is the first cover against conscious and unconscious interference in color. This man must immediately leave the room, for you couldn’t guess according to his grimaces, mimics and gesticulation in what way had he mixed colors. It will be better if it is just a stranger from a street, whom you will show how to do it on a decolorized monitor, but you should first train to do it yourself, mybe using a manual for self-tuition to the program Corel Painter, but necessarily with non-colored illustrations, which will be even cheaper.

Naturally, while changing colors, mister N should take into consider that colors must be as pure as possible, without any tinges. The subconsciousness may guess logically the disposition of colors in program by default, but mister’s N interference will spoil it’s game.
The rule will be not to try to see the drawing in color until it is finished. Save the picture in a file and only after leaving the program return color to the monitor.



This is the image with an unpredictable color. I took colors from the pallet and mixed them, I mean, I did everything as usual, except I hadn’t seen the saturation.



In fact, I supposed that there wiil be a colored mess, but a lot of my drawings can be percepted, to some I’ve even gave titles.



And this is how it looked like while working with the drawing.



*it is meant that you work with two pallets – the Mixer itself and the Color Sets. Colors for mixing in the display space of the “mixer” you can take from the pallet Color Sets, it is more convenient for the discribed above manipulations.

Foma Tuturov 2008