preˈcisionist, n. and a.
(Also erron, (after precisian) -anist.)
[f. precision + -ist.]
A. n. One who makes a profession or practice of precision or exactness in observance or expression; a purist; spec. in Art, one of a group of U.S. artists of the 1920s who employed a smooth, precise technique in their paintings.
| 1827 Examiner 822/1 Enjoyment which..precisianists, purists, and conventiclers would totally extinguish. 1865 Bushnell Vicar. Sacr. iii. iii. 229 Must He be a precisionist in order to be passed as just? 1865 Sat. Rev. 21 Jan. 83/2 Well-meaning precisionists who are striving to bring back the now mongrel or mixed Romaic of the Hellenes to the purer idiom. 1873 Spectator 15 Feb. 203/2 Both are precisianists in utterance, and skilled in the manipulation of the finest shades of language. 1960 Art in Amer. iii. 33/1 Its [sc. Cubism's] effects still prevade the most recent work of the Precisionists. 1974 Encycl. Brit. Micropædia VIII. 185/2 The Precisionists did not issue manifestos, and they were not a school or movement with a formal program. Ibid., The Precisionists' style greatly influenced the American Magic Realists and the Pop artists. 1978 Verbatim Winter 6/2 And I am certain that that great precisionist intended a true rhyme. |
B. adj. Employing or exhibiting precision as an artistic technique.
| 1960 Art in Amer. iii. 32/1 The Precisionist painting process is one of continual distillation and editing. 1978 Chicago June 62/1 Precisionist paintings, ranging from realistic to abstract. 1979 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts Nov. 747/2 Even American or German architecture looks a bit thrown together when compared with the precisionist craftsmanship of his high-gloss aluminium detailing. |
Hence preˈcisionism, the style or technique of the precisionist painters.
| 1960 Art in Amer. iii. 47 When Jefferson consciously reacted against the light, impermanent and provincial qualities of American building..it was to another and more integral kind of ‘precisionism’ that he turned: to a precisionism of mass. 1978 S. F. Yeh Precisionist Painters 10 The basis for Precisionism is to be found in Cubism. |