The Semiotics of Dumbing Down Contemporary Fine Art Designs
Teaching Assistant: Hind Abdullah Abed [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Hella Abdul Shaheed Mustafa [email protected]
Abstract
Contemporary art witnessed developments that had an impact on all areas of life.
Postmodern arts are no longer bound by traditional foundations, rules, and certain cyphers to find meaning, but the formal signifier has prevailed at the expense of the exact semantic context and content, which made critical analysis prefer the dismantling of semantic structures and the succession of free connotations at the expense of the unified context. The process of deciphering the encrypted signs became one of the priorities of the semiotic criticism tasks. From this point, both researchers decided to delve into the study of these artistic signs, the methods of their formation, and the most prominent techniques adopted by its following artists, and the research problem was identified by raising the following question: What is the Semiotics of Dumbing Down Contemporary Fine Art Designs?
The aim of the current research is to reveal the Semiotics of Dumbing Down Contemporary Fine Art Designs.
The research community consisted of (50) artworks, and the research sample was determined by choosing four works that were deliberately selected according to postmodern trends, and for the purpose of analyzing these works, both researchers built a tool for the analysis, which achieved honesty and stability, and after completing the analysis of the works, the results of the research resulted in the following:
The artist chose to ignore the reading unit of the artist's definition, in exchange for a spontaneous plastic design, which obliges the recipient to accept the simplicity and execution of ideas.
The most important conclusions were as follows:
The samples showed an open interpretation and connotations due to Dumbing Down and simplicity of its expression, which allows the recipient the freedom to express his ideas.
Keywords: Semiotics, Dumbing Down, Contemporary Fine Art Designs.
First: Research Problem
The changes that Western countries and American society witnessed had their impact on all areas of life, and the most prominent thing that happened in the field of art was its departure from the elite academic framework to the general public.
Art work during the post-modern stage was no longer bound by traditional foundations and rules and certain cyphers to find meaning, but the formal signifier was overwhelmed at the expense of the specific semantic content and context, which made critical analysis prefer the dismantling of sign structures and the succession of free connotations at the expense of the unified context. So that the composition of signs has a personal symbolic character and ciphers directed to the mass culture. Thus, the process of deciphering the encrypted signs became one of the priorities of the semiotic criticism tasks, and the contemporary plastic achievement appeared in its visual image through formal, color and kinetic effects that capture the reader’s awareness of its promotional advertising model based on Dumbing Down, chance, imagination, free play, and the multiplicity of readings as a way of thinking, so it is no longer confined to a phenomenon specific to a society, but rather, a cultural phenomenon that opens up to the world, to break into environments completely different from the one from which it emerged.
From this point of view, both researchers decided to delve into the study of these artistic signs, the methods of their formation, and the most prominent techniques adopted by its following artists. The problem of the research, then, was determined by asking the following question: What is the Semiotics of Dumbing Down Contemporary Fine Art Designs?
Second: Research Importance
The current research highlights the following:
1. Enriching libraries and specialist students and researchers with such studies as it adds to their knowledge in the field of artistic criticism.
2. The potential is there to benefit from the current research in clarifying the intellectual and philosophical premises of semiotic criticism in the field of reading contemporary fine art.
3. The research dealt with an important aspect of the artistic trends that affected the progress of plastic arts, and reflected the concepts of postmodern thought in light of dispersion, chaos, and Dumbing Down.
Third: Research Purpose
The purpose of the current research is to discover the Semiotics of Dumbing Down Contemporary Fine Art Designs.
Fourth: Research Limits
The limits of the current research are with regard to the productions of postmodern arts.
Fifth: Terminology
Semiotics: Semiotics: It is the science that studies the references and signs that humans use to communicate, including signs, gestures, words, slogans, advertisements, inscriptions, music, smoke signals, clothing, and food, etc.
(Nawaf: 2011, P. 164). "The science that deals with the study of signs and their levels in discourse, (Huwaidi: 2015: 158).
Dumbing Down: It is a noun referring to Surface: which is shallow, simple and outward, (Omar 2008: 1064-1063).It is also defined as "that which is attributed to a surface that has no depth", (Ahmad: 272 2008).
Thought: “Thought is the actions of the mind in things to reach their knowledge, and it is used in the general sense for every phenomenon of mental life.” (Jamil: 1994: 154), and “thought is generally used to refer to every phenomenon of mental life, and it means mental activity, whether this activity is counted by itself and regardless of its cognitive dimension, or the awareness of everything that happens within or without our intentions, or the gift of cognitive, understanding, and judging things”, (Jalal Al-Din: 2004: 329).While Dumbing Down is “what is done by looking at things from their outward appearance without going deep, or trying to understand the circumstances that surround them”, (Al-Awfi: 2010: 110).
Both researchers define Dumbing Down procedurally as: all the ideas that the artist shows in his contemporary plastic art designs that depend on the external,
superficial semantic level.
Contemporary plastic art designs: defined procedurally as: the style characterized by postmodern arts, which highlights the phenomenon of Dumbing Down.
Chapter II
Theoretical Framework First Topic
The Intellectual and Philosophical Premises of Semiotic Criticism
The science of semiology is one of the sciences which accompanies the increasing human needs, the most important of which is communication and the establishment of a common meaning for the study of various signs, and this science was linked to other sciences such as logic, history, sociology, psychology, and others. As for its foundations, it was identified by (Saussure) and (Pierce). Where the Europeans adhered to the singular semiology based on Saussure's definition, while the Americans prefer the semiotics brought by the American thinker and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce), (Al-Ruwaili and Saad: 2002: 177).Saussure specializes in studying linguistic signs as a semiological system and sees that “the linguistic sign falls into a larger group of signs, so if the word is a sign of thought or of a thing, it is part of more comprehensive audio-visual signs such as traffic signs and military ranks” (Aba Issa, 2004, P. 73).Thus, Saussure pulled the foundations of the linguistic language to other formats, including the semiotic analysis of the image, to show the difference in terms of “(composition, replacement, form, essence, content, signifying unit, differential unit, etc.), from those special linguistic concepts (phoneme, word, prefix, suffix, double parts, etc.)", (Shibani: 2010:
54).While (Pearce) was distinguished by the comprehensiveness of his semiotic study, which included linguistic and non-linguistic signs, defining the foundations of analysis according to logic, inference, and phenomenology to make his method mathematical and scientific. So he took the structure of the sign as an entrance to explain its types and reveal its semantic reference context and its meaning, as follows:
1. The Representamen: “It is the material carrier of the sign, and it does not exist except through its realization within a subject by an interpreter, and it is not necessarily verbal”, (Al-Ammari: :8-7).
2. The Subject: The sign cannot be a subject for itself, it is a sign of its subject through some of its manifestations, and thus, it cannot be a substitute for something, it represents one of its symbolic representations, in the broad sense of the word (symbol)”, (Said: 2012: 342).
3. The Interpretation: The sign is the (Representamen) which refers to an (Object) through the (interpretation), and this movement, (chain of references), is what constitutes in Peirce’s theory what is called semitones, that is, the coding activity that leads to the production and circulation of the signifier”, (Said:
2012: 91).
Fig. (1) Bridget Riley
According to this triple division, Pierce presented nine types of signs, and the most commonly used in semiotic analysis in terms of the sign's connection with its subject or reference from it are, the icon; the sign in which is based on similarity, the index, and the sign within it is causal. In addition to symbolism, and the sign is based on custom or social agreement, (Abd al-Kafi, 328).The judgment issued by (Pearce) on the iconographic mark is similar to its reference, and (Umberto Eco) disagreed with him, stating that the similarity does not include actual conformity but is relative, as there are selective perceptual factors for some characteristics and not as a whole. Teething that governs the human experience as a whole: every attempt to perceive and define its very being and the content of an iconic sign requires an awareness of prior knowledge open to multiple worlds”, (Said: 2012:
120).
The similarity that governs the iconic sign with its reference does not adhere to the meaning on the basis of this interconnection. Rather, the signified is of a consensual nature to facilitate human communication and unify the common meaning. “The signifier that is linked to one of the signs can take any form as agreed, and it is not an actual essence in the meaning that must be preserved in order to It is by itself the common meaning of this signifier, for the fact that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is random means that there are no fixed cosmic concepts, or constant cosmic functions, and it also means that the signifier itself is random and that the signifier is likewise” (Jonathan: 2000: 36).For example, the work of the artist (Bridget Riley), which went beyond the specific documentary dimension and produced symbols of a private nature, not according to law and social agreement, but rather of a temporary individual nature. Note that defining the reference of a mark in public life seems much easier than determining it within the artwork when its composition is of an expressive imaginary nature specific to the artist, because the mark in the context of art is not subject to such determination, hence the semantic flexibility within the framework of art and the ability of the mark to be valid to refer to more than one reference.
Second Topic: Dumbing Down in Contemporary Art
Postmodern art is distinguished as an inseparable artistic mainstream, rooted in daily life and enamored with it, as well as being a media event and part of the culture of globalization, as art has spread among many mediums. So, (Eagleton) describes postmodernism as “a style in culture that reflects some sort of this change, through an art that is without depth, center, or foundation, it is deductive, self-reflective, playful, derivational, and eclectic art that blurs the boundaries between classy culture and popular culture, just as it blurs the boundaries between art and daily life experiences.As a result of this multiplicity of methods and being influenced by European art schools and new innovations, artistic mainstreams and trends have emerged since the 40s of the 20th Century. The artistic image is derived from mental or psychological elements without relying on physical material, and it is one of the classifications of the existential philosopher (Sartre) of the imagined mental image, which represents the highest degree of abstraction within the metaphysical matter.The artist transforms the visible into references or signs, and the vocabulary of contemporary plastic discourse changes, transcending traditional binaries from abstraction, embodiment or diagnosis, and style to an integrated vision that includes the man, the environment, the environment, and the subject itself. The stimulants that obtain visual attention must take their share of thinking
and perception, no matter how simple and naïve they seem. The artist is by nature a seeker for meaning in everything that revolves around him. It is a communicative need with the other, and since thought is the product of the thinking process, its function is not limited to an abstract mental manner, but rather a behavior that appears through “man’s social and productive activities, and ensures an intermediate reflection of reality and reveals the natural connections within it, (Rosenthal and Yu din: 1967: 332). Thought and expression go hand in hand, and are embodied in the artist's reactions through a medium in a realistic manner, whether they are linguistic or artistic; which means, messages with a purpose.
Postmodern arts have merged with the temptations of technical progress and computer programming mechanisms, and the revolution of contemporary formation came from optical physics, carrying lasers and X-rays into the field of plastic arts and employing them in the field of contemporary postmodern arts.
capricious, in a way that is based on the collection of simple elements, linguistic sounds and simple geometric shapes coordinated according to the formulation of the artwork, such as the use of spent bags, empty boxes, and engineering structures, in a coordinated and spontaneous manner at other times.
On the other hand, it is necessary to recognize the distinction between the idea and the image derived from the external world, that the idea is general and abstract, and the image is partial and personalized, that the personalized image is not an end in itself, but rather its connection with references and meanings of an idea, which is not direct and simple in all its cases. The term identical idea refers to the idea that represents its subject and fully comprehends it, and it is opposite to the non- conforming idea that is ambiguous or lacks definition, (Jameel: 1994, 158).
Perhaps, if it adopts simple and direct topics, then (the expression is clear, but it is superficial and lacks depth, which differs from the problems that include deep aspects and a purpose), (Paul: 11).Dumbing Down takes the appearance of things and does not delve into its essence, and Dumbing Down is closer to the marginal aspects of it, so it stops at results of a special kind, and it cannot go beyond them to what is deeper in diving into the depths of the problem or subject matter, as (the recipient is satisfied according to this superficiality by passing observation of signs with lack of information or distortion, and without trying to search for a specific reference or information related to it, then coming up with a superficial judgment), (Ryan: 2006, P. 113-236). This evaluation is a semi-automatic behavior in most of its cases. The knowledge acquired is not a constant acceptance in every perception and experience. This interaction must include a judgment of
an acquired cognitive value, and what it adds to the cognitive experience. For example, the artist (Willem de Kooning) in his work (Woman) is a body and intentionally carried out in an abstract manner, reducing the details with cutting areas of the figure and inserting them within the overall structure of the painting.
The figure was executed with sharp and emotional strokes, in which the colors of the figure overlapped with the colors of the background to provide the form with an expressive energy of a special kind, and the recipient must deduce the idea, whether it is direct, clear, or implicitly suggestive. Thus, the message’s motive is public, and the thinking remains revolving around the form without the content.
Fig. (2) Willem de Kooning
Here it is necessary to distinguish between two basic types of Dumbing Down:
1. A thought that lacks the ability to delve deeper into analysis and dive into various dimensions, either out of hurry, laziness, weakness of thinking, or an imbalance in the education of deep thinking.
2. Thought that stems from an optional approach, which companions have written well-known lines for which the thinking ends, and they do not want to transcend them and go deeper.This type of superficiality is common among people, and its dangers lie in its reliance on theories and facts, which could lead to being stigmatized as superficial, (Abd Al-Salam: 2011).
Accordingly, the work idea is not related to its transfer from the simple level to the level of intentional organization, as is the case in semiotic analysis and its transitions between semantic levels, so the purpose is (Dumbing the contents, and in which, the visual image is preferred over deep processing, so that the content remains directed towards the general public and is not limited to the elite), (Ayad:
2015, 243).
It is clear from the above, that semiotic criticism distinguishes between two contexts for the significance of the sign, a direct context, and an implicit context that takes the direction of interpretation. The simple semantic level (presents itself as a given that does not give more than its surface, and semiotics uses the terms (depth) and (surface), in the relative sense, to indicate the degree of progression of the narrative distance, which proceeds from the primary structures, to indicate the production of its expression, as it determines (the surface structure), in its relationship, with (the deep structure), (Said: 1985, P. 53). This relationship between semantic levels is close to the concept of intellectual flatness, in that the formation of signs is satisfied with the direct and is not carried out beyond that, and this is called “Empty Signifier”. The definitions of the "empty" or "free" sign signifier, being a signifier of vague, very variable, indefinite, or non-existent signifier. This means, that this symbolic signifier is the closest represented by the imagined artwork (when the artist is satisfied with the material equivalent that is determined in a formal way, so it appears within the limits of ordinary and simple things and does not require interpretation), (Khalil: 2018, P. 293). The intellectual flatness of signs may by its nature be intentional due to the absence of content, and the need is to fix the formality and be satisfied with the apparent reading, as it does not hint at references and implicit semantics of a special type of coding.
Topic Three: Postmodern Arts:
The postmodern aesthetic discourse opens up to the everyday and the transient to reflect the culture of real-life visuals, to relate to the rhythm of daily life, coupled with the noisy media, the art of commercial advertising posters, and the photographic arts (and the use of the dominant and expressive in it, and branding the road and related to excitement, irony, pornography, stardom, alienation, the absurdity of things, subjects and nihilism). Existence, and dependence on the secretions of a post-industrial society of metal slags, welding, plastics, dyes, clinging to consumerism, and the distractions of fashion and modern themes), (Al- Wadi: 2011, P. 55-56). The logic of modernity is based on what is (worthy, united, and sensible) and is contrasted by the logic of postmodernism based on what is (ephemeral, fragmented, separate, chaotic and marginal). That it is modernity at its extreme ends that presenting ideas through some means represents a necessary expressive need accompanying man. Postmodern arts through the effective influence of human behavior as the cultural stock of that society expressing its values, customs, lifestyle and patterns, and thus the contemporary artist changed the direction of his expression with the beginning of the postmodern stage and "the
philosophy of this stage stresses the need to re-read the concept of Art, according to the developmental and popular mechanisms of the cultural community, (Al- Dulaimy: 2012, P. 257). Also, the adoption of methods that fragment the unified idea and leave the implicit one, and this is evident in Figure (3), which came in response to the mental systems that went too far in their applications on everything, including the human being who appealed to the conditions imposed on him. Western society rose from the category of opponents to the centrality of the mind, and art’s usebecame (superficial, parallel to the daily realization and interest of man, and its focus on other answers, other than the aspects of content that were characteristic of traditional art), (Rosin: 2011, P. 301).
Fig. (3)
The artist has generated an urge to cling to irrational ideas and adopting Derrida’s deconstruction to strike the centrality of ideas, demolish the signifier, explode the horizon of meaning and shift their meanings, in response to the demands of rejecting class discrimination and the rule of the elitist at the expense of the poor classes,(Al-Hatimi: 2013: P. 10), Figures (4) and (5).
Fig. (4)Robert Rauschenberg Fig. (5)Andy Warhol
The artist made the everyday and the despised art a special priority in expression, and although the semiotic approach gave the cultural codes a role in revealing the structure of the sign’s meaning, the postmodern artist rejected this centralization and (missing the purposes of the artwork, as it is similar to what the common man sees, the borders overlapped between the world of daily living and the world of art in the phenomena of contemporary art that work is nothing but a color on the material, and not something else, (Khalil: 2018, P. 302). Many works have been produced that express this rebellious thought against reality and scientific systems of culture, so that the irrational and meaningless features become a basic premise.
Everything is good, the signifier is liberated, and the power of the signified is destroyed. That is, the meaning and the intent while the signifier remains, that material, objective, sensible surface, there is a scattering or distraction of the sign, and only signifier is kept as signifier, and we deal with it in this way as an affirmation of semantic indifference, or play with semantics, (Qassim: 2012, P.
159). There are many artistic trends that represented this rebellious thought, such as abstract expressionism, pop art, graffiti art, and others, and what distinguishes graffiti art is its launch from people whose obsession was not artistic expression but sabotage acts, scribbling on roofs, harassment of the authorities, and uprising against society, to make their voice heard. (Walsh, 1996) And the writings turned into artistic forms of an aesthetic nature different from the traditional foundations, as shown in Figure (6), (through the practice of painting on the walls, the walls became reflective of his desires, protest and defiance of society with the intention of pulling the recipient by violating him with all that is strange), (Pereira, 2005).
Fig. (6)
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK INDICATORS
1. Semiotic criticism is an approach that defines the study of signs according to their composition of signifier, signifier, and reference. The intellectual flatness of these components touches the formal signifier (the representative of the sign) and relates to references and direct superficial connotations of signs.
2. The reference of the iconic sign is one thing, and its connotation is another. The similarity that combines them does not justify the creation of the meaning and its jurisprudence, but it is from the society’s custom and agreement.
3. Describing the sign as the empty signifier, when no single meaning is specified for it or that it does not exist, is very close to the characteristics of postmodern arts that dismantled the structure and consistency of signs.
4. Contemporary plastic achievement adopts signs with personal codes specific to the artist and vague to the general public, which makes the formal components of the artwork and its hints the center of receiving and accepting the work.
Chapter III
Research Methodology and Procedures First: Research Methodology
For the purpose of analyzing the works of contemporary plastic art and extracting and interpreting data, the two researchers followed the descriptive analytical approach as it is the most appropriate method to achieve the current research.
Second: Research Community
Due to the expansion of the community of postmodern artworks and the difficulty of enumerating them, the two researchers identified the community with the available works through what was collected from the Internet, so that the community consisted of (50) artworks.
Third: Research Sample
Four works of postmodern trends (graffiti, pop art, visual art, conceptual art) were intentionally selected.
Fourth: Research Tool
For the purpose of achieving the goal of the research, and in light of the indicators of the theoretical framework, an analysis tool was built and included two main axes:
The first: decoding the codes of the mark.
The second: analysis of the external semantic context of the signs.
Presentation techniques for postmodern art.
Fifth: Research Verification
The research tool, in its initial form, was presented to a group of arbitrators specialized in the field of art education, arts and plastic arts, for the purpose of verifying its apparent sincerity, and according to their opinions, the necessary modifications were made.
Research Stability
To verify the stability of the research tool, both researchers re-analyzed (the researcher with herself), after analyzing two works, and re-analyzing after two weeks of the first analysis and extracting the compatibility and stability between them, reaching (80%).
Artworks Analysis Sample (1)
Artist Name: MIESTOPANTAL WTK ZFA
Year of Production: 2006 Place: Lisbon, Portugal
This work shows a variety of distracting formal functions for visual attention.
Despite the graffiti artist’s reliance on linguistic writing to present his identification identity, the imagined design removed the reading influence of the word, and the shape of the letters no longer referred to an iconic linguistic reference linked to regular linguistic forms as they are outside the work. On the other hand, the reading significance disappeared behind the artistic formation, because the interconnection of the letters of the word and according to the reading
systems changed, and the work became a free symbolic composition.As for distinguishing some letters, it is a cognitive illusion, because the visual memory that preserves the drawing of shapes tries to find a formal analogy, but it quickly escapes from this comparison and the attempt of formal conformity, and the recipient acknowledges that the work was accomplished by free play in which the artist wanted to undermine the traditional foundations, and found from imagination the way to launch in an open space The signs move in it, thus the work with its symbolism and vocabulary, which is full of energy and vitality, does not specify a direct realistic reference to the sign, but rather simple hints, most of which are of an imaginary nature.Thus, the conditions of semiotic reference disintegrated, the external context of the signs does not carry a unified semantic system, and the idea remains in its simplicity under the visual surface and the splendor of forms, because what was presented by a unique expression is a formal attraction and sudden movements of signs without justification.
Sample (2)
Artist’s Name: Tom Wesselmann Title: Still Life
Production Year: 1962
It appears in this work the distribution of functions in an illogical superimposed form of symbolic abstraction and other iconic forms
borrowed from reality, but represented in the form of advertising, and despite the artist’s use of signs with a known direct reference, whether (for pieces of bread, drinks, bathroom, art painting). But the semantic context for the interdependence of such signs is missing, because the work is in its origin a representation of chance and spontaneous free expression in which things gathered whatever they were without a specific link to their choice, so that the recipient remains in front of the meaningless and irrational, the chosen signs revolve around daily life and the daily consumer nature that is the focus of contemporary human life, rather Critical expression rejecting the society of consumers. While the recipient who is ignorant of the expressive purpose did not see in it more than a familiar visual image without meaning, thus achieving the goal of intellectual flatness and keeping thinking away from implicit search, because the entire formation is based on difference and exoticism, a rebellion against transcendent values, by taking despised, vulgar things, overthrowing elite values, the work Its basis is the formal
simplification that is compatible with the mass culture, that is, the value of the work is equal to daily needs and its simple themes accompany the important and the unimportant, achieving an aesthetic of a special kind.
Sample (3)
Artist’s Name: Jesus Rafael Soto Year: 1998
It is noted in this work the dispersion of the centrality of functions and their distribution in a free space, as well as the composition of the artistic image distributed between flat and three-dimensional shapes. Therefore, the symbol that is dealt with does not carry specific connotations, but rather the goal is cognitive stillness and the realization of the meaningless by making (the empty signifier) symbolic. The artist exaggerated the arbitrariness of his
representation of the familiar when he freed the forms from the limitations of reality, and referred them to an imagined world.With the intention of alienating the artistic image so that the work approaches, in most of its aspects of abstract art, through its pure forms, feelings remain neutral and do not cause an emotional impact more than what color and shape and their movement provide, and therefore
they are unique signs for themselves, there is nothing similar in visual memory visual illusions driven by imagination by embodied shapes Flattening them and moving between them with a visual evasion, so the shapes appear advanced and the shadows retracted, despite the strength of the shadows appearing as shapes parallel to the
importance of the advanced shapes. The entire work represents nothing but an intellectual flatness that shows very marginal ideas and information, and thus is the fragmentation in the unity of the signifier and the signified, a formation that targets the dazzling visual form more than its contents.
Sample (4)
Artist’s Name: Joseph Kosuth Title: One and Three Chairs
Year: 1965
The expressive form taken by the artist for one subject, which is the chair, but his representation came with different and adjacent expressions, each of which has a different perceptual effect from the other, whether as a linguistic system and reading units, which are regular codes and abstract symbols, and other of a realistic and tangible nature accompanying its description, as well as the selected image of the chair in A moment, different expressions of a single concept, but it is a secular space and an intellectual flatness that is not implemented until now using consumer forms whose purpose is functional. While the signs are adjacent to a symbolic form free from the association of the signifier with the signified, an arbitrary relationship of a special quality moving with hypothetical significations formulated by the recipient, who is dragged by the work authority to the area of imagination and the search for what moves the consistency of its different parts in the light of the implicit signs open on the paths of interpretation to the contents he is looking for, and the sign does not carry Hints from its immediate subject as expressed by Pierce.In terms of artistic significance, the artist left the work open to the meaningless, and no emotional or emotional impact could be revealed to him.
Rather, he delved into dismantling the center of the vision, bearing in mind that the semantic context is unified in terms of the relationship of signs with each other and their connection to the concept of the chair, but the references that specify them differ between what is realistic. Therefore, the structure of the sign in its origin becomes weak in the coherence of its components, its significance and its objective transitions.
Chapter IV
Conclusions and Discussion
Despite the expressive features of postmodern arts in achieving Dumbing Down, it came in different ways, as follows:
The artist chose to exclude the reading unit of the artist's defining word, in exchange for a spontaneous plastic design, which obliges the recipient to accept the simplicity and directness of ideas, as in sample (1).
Sample (2) shows the use of simple forms in their realistic reference, as they are of a practical nature that does not penetrate into content, but rather a daily use needs that the artist has introduced into an artistic framework to achieve the superficiality of ideas and to raise the status of the marginal and the despised.
Sample (3) was characterized by its pure abstraction and visual illusions between the flatness of the anthropomorphic formalism and the free distribution of functions, and the receiving artist occupied these details and kept him away from the content.
While sample (4) contained intellectual flatness in simple and direct forms and concepts and combining it with them according to their perception.
Through the analysis of the four samples, it was found that the intellectual flatness, whose concept crystallized in the postmodern period, stems from either partial meanings that undermine the center and are not systematically related to the structure of signs and a coherent semantic context, but rather from simple and marginal concepts of borrowed forms within the work
Conclusions
The samples showed an open interpretation and connotations due to Down Dumbing and simplicity of its expression, which allows the recipient the freedom to express his thoughts.
The semantic pattern in semiotic criticism supposes analytical transitions provided by the superficial signification towards the depth of the signified, and this matter was undermined by contemporary art by adopting allusions to signs that could be familiar and superficial ideas that do not reach a specific signification or semantic pattern.
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