Emmanuel Anati 1988

Origini dell’arte e della concettualità.
Di fronte e attraverso, Vol. 218.
Milano: Jaca Book [pp. 200].

An in-depth presentation of the theory and methodology of the interpretation of rock art. Important for our interests is chapter 6, where he addresses the question of “order and logic”: he speaks explicitly of the need to develop a systematic analysis of “;grammar and syntax” (p. 107), and he identifies as “;graphemes” (ibid. and passim) the minimal constituents of the individual representations seen as texts.

Also important is the definition of three categories of graphemes: pictograms are figures with an identifiable referent in nature; ideograms are repetitive signs that “seem to indicate the presence of assumed conventional concepts”; psychograms [an original concept as far as it concerns stylistic analysis of rock art] are signs which are neither representational nor conventionally symbolic, but “express sensations such as heat or cold, light or darkness, life or death” (p. 105), “they are signs that have the power to stir the blood and the mind without eliciting any specific association”, and while ideograms are synthetic and repetitive, “the psychograms have none of these chracteristics” (p. 114).