“Preponderanza” e “superamento” nelle ricerche artistiche sul linguaggio

In late 1959, the first issue of «Azimuth» — the artist magazine edited by Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni — published a truly radical contribution by Vincenzo Agnetti, titled I: non commettere atti impuri (lit. First: You Shall Not Commit Impure Actions, with reference to the most common Italian version of the prescription of the Seventh Commandment). His words fell almost unlistened. Taking Agnetti’s text as a starting point, this article investigates prominent aspects of the analytic researches on language led by some Italian artists (as well as Agnetti, Martino Oberto, Ugo Carrega and Vincenzo Ferrari) during the Sixties and the Seventies, trying to highlight their primary ideological and ethical issues.