Form of painting associated primarily with the Italian artist Luciano Lattanzi and the German Werner Schreib. The term was launched in 1957 in a manifesto written by Lattanzi for his exhibition at the New Vision Centre Gallery in London and was coined to draw a parallel between their art and the forms of language. The manifesto enumerated 'eight propositions' and claimed that semantic art marked the decline of individualism in art and abolished the distinction between animate and inanimate objects. Prompted by ACTION PAINTING and indirectly by Surrealism, it was based on AUTOMATISM. The artist was required to execute drawings or paintings without conscious intervention, so tapping the unconscious. The resulting work would then comprise largely 'natural signs', which could be contemplated and deciphered by the artist. As products of an intelligible, rational universe, these natural signs are comprehensible, although some might be so complex as to defy adequate interpretation. Unlike action painting, which used spontaneous means to unleash the individual psyche, semantic art was designed to probe the universal structure common to all objects. As in a language, the works are composed of signs, the meanings of which depend on their context and arrangement. These plastic signs are, however, more 'vital' than their linguistic counterparts. The typical style of semantic art in drawing and painting is a densely worked pattern of such abstract shapes as circles, lines, spirals and organic forms, for example Semantic Painting (1963; priv. col., see 1964 exh. cat., pl. 11) and Semantic Drawing (1963; priv. col., see 1964 exh. cat., pl. 4), both by Lattanzi. Schreib obeyed the same aesthetic but often impressed abstract designs on to thick paste using a stamp, producing such works as Arithmetic Organization (1963; priv. col., see 1969 exh. cat.).
See the Abbreviations for further details.
