subliminal Does "subliminal" in the following context mean "hidden and unconscious" or "not enough"? Text: It is not that the body is absent from Modernism, but, apart from its eruption in Surrealism in the 1930s, its presence is subliminal. The body also somewhat disappeared in contemporary art in the emphasis in 1980s postmodernism on cultural signs and signifiers and their appropriation or simulation in art.