Visual Intertextuality in the Artworks of Saudi Artists: An analytical study

The term intertextuality, its concept and theory, emerged from the womb of the semiological trend in the theory of culture and literature belonging to modern linguistics. That is to the visual text such as theatre, cinema, and formation, where the theory of intertextuality made a turning point in the field of criticism, especially in the field of semiotic criticism, so the visual text became subject to critical semiotic and analytical practices of the meanings and connotations that surround the image of the theater, the image of the film, and the plastic image. Since intertextuality in its general concept is the convergence or intersection of a new text with a previous text or texts, it is evidence that human knowledge is cumulative intercultural knowledge, as it is subject to influence and be influenced by different human knowledge, and that cultural interaction, is what reproduces that knowledge - including plastic knowledge - in different and renewed forms, but at the same time it is not without overlap and intersection that comes on multiple forms that are levels, and patterns of intertextuality. This study is concerned with studying the manifestations of visual intertextuality in the visual plastic elements, which is represented among the works of the Saudi artists, where an intentional sample of the figurative plastic works of Saudi artists is chosen in order to ensure the presence of intertextuality in them in different forms so that the study achieves its objectives. The number of works in the study sample reached (12) figurative works, which are studied and analyzed, and the study produced many results, the most important of which is that intertextuality in the works of the Saudi formations is produced through the gradual influence of some Saudi formations, as some of them are affected in the early stages of the formation by prominent Saudi plasticines, and the visual intertextuality represented in the works of Saudi figurines is mostly in partial intertextuality patterns such as embedding (inlaying), reduction, amplification (expansion); The study also suggests conducting studies dealing with intertextuality in general - and not only in the visual elements - in the works of the Saudi formations, to ensure the technical and stylistic intertextuality, and the intertextuality of meanings and connotations in the intertextual works.