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Horror Vacui

Form is emptiness

Emptiness is form.

- The Heart Sutra

In Western aesthetics, emptiness was long considered a sign of poverty. Wealth was automatically expressed in lavishly ornamented houses and interiors and paintings filled to the edges of their frames. A well-known example for many is undoubtedly the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where, despite its monumental dimensions (over 70 meters long and 12 meters high), not a single unadorned spot can be found. Everything is geared towards impressing and displaying power, and you don't do that with emptiness. Victorian rooms are filled to the brim with more or less artistic expressions; the walls are covered with frames and small pictures, furniture is adorned with handcrafted woodwork, and even the ceilings are not forgotten.

In visual art, this fear of emptiness is also known as horror vacui (in Greek: kenophobia). The Italian scientist and art critic Mario Praz (1896–1982) used this term to criticize the obsessive cluttering of Victorian interiors. According to Praz and his followers, the effect was an overwhelming amount of visual information that made the spaces chaotic and unattractive. Emptiness has a negative connotation (think of the term "negative space"); it is simply nothing, or at least dull, unrefined, or incomplete. Ex nihilo nihil fit — nothing comes from nothing. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the king warns his daughter Cordelia that “nothing will come of nothing”; Bertolt Brecht asks, “What happens to the holes when the cheese is eaten?”

In Eastern culture, on the other hand, emptiness is valued as much as non-emptiness. In the *Heart Sutra*, one of the most important Buddhist texts, it says: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Everything is interconnected and inseparable. The Zen Buddhist concept of Ma is seen as the foundation of Japanese minimalism and refers to the emptiness in which forms can exist, be visible, and gain meaning. Without Ma, there is no form, and without form, there is no Ma. It draws the viewer’s attention not only to the objects but also to the space between them. The Chinese character for Ma is a combination of two characters. One represents a gate (門), and under the gate is the character for the moon (月). A crossing of light and darkness. Ma is usually translated as “the space between things,” “gap,” “interval,” or “pause.”

From the first half of the 1950s, Zen philosophy began to cautiously make its way into the Western art world, partly through the work of D.T. Suzuki, a Japanese-American Buddhist monk, philosopher, and writer who introduced Zen to America. The composer John Cage, among others, attended Suzuki’s seminars at Columbia University, and much of his music and visual art is inspired by Zen. This inspiration led to perhaps his most famous piece, *4’33’’*, a composition of 4 minutes and 33 seconds consisting only of silence—a Ma, an emptiness of more than 4 minutes. The composer creates nothing, the musician plays nothing, and the audience witnesses it all, listening to nothing. As Marcel Duchamp, Cage’s friend and chess partner, put it: “It’s not art that you see is the art; art is the gap.”

Ma is more than just an artistic and philosophical concept; it is a life philosophy, a way of living. In Japan, pauses and silences form an essential part of communication, including non-verbal communication: a bow is interrupted at its deepest point by a pause of about three seconds, as a sign of respect. Silence is traditionally seen as something genuine. In Zen Buddhism, spoken words are distrusted, and silence is preferred. In the West, silences in conversation are often perceived as uncomfortable, and we try to fill such gaps with words, even if it’s just talking about the neighbor's cat. We feel more comfortable with a constant stream of sounds. At home, at work, in the supermarket, on the street, we are constantly surrounded by noise. Silence has become a rare thing.

Ma is the foundation of all Japanese art forms, from the tea ceremony to Ikebana (flower arranging), in Noh theater and haiku poetry, from martial arts to garden design, architecture, and painting. This unconventional use of emptiness, by Western standards, is already visible in Chinese painting from the Song dynasty (959 to 1279). These amateur painters—the literati—used a simple style, often with only a rock or tree as the subject. The so-called washed ink technique (Sumi-e in Japanese) was used to leave clouds, mist, sky, and water partially unpainted. The visibility of these forms was suggested by allowing other elements, such as rocks or trees, to gradually blend into emptiness. Ma Yuan is a prominent representative of this painting style. His works are often “one-corner” paintings, where the actual subject is depicted in one corner and the rest remains largely empty. The emptiness in the paintings forms an essential part and is not simply an unpainted section. You could call it “painting without painting.”

The Sumi-e art is about the relationship between the form and the emptiness that surrounds it. The white space is the glue that connects the other elements. Zen painters regard empty space as the ultimate reality, an energetic field with infinite possibilities. Emptiness symbolizes infinity. For the Literati, the nothing was just as important as the something. The Song painters primarily created landscapes, or rather "nature-scapes," depicting nature—mountains, clouds, rivers, birds, mist, rocks—as felt through Taoism and Zen. It is a nature to which humans also belong but do not dominate. Humans are not separate from nature; they are part of it—they “are” nature. Therefore, there is no clear (human) perspective as in Western painting, and shadows are absent.

This relationship between humans and nature is symbolically portrayed in a painting by Ma Yuan, *Poet Drinking by Moonlight*. The poet in the title is so tucked away in the corner that you must make an effort to find him. This small man, lost in the landscape, symbolizes the harmonious attitude of humans toward nature.

Emptiness is the foundation of Eastern aesthetic theory in (painting) art. The composition is built up from emptiness. In the West, we are accustomed to painting or photographing objects, but Chinese landscape painters start with emptiness, with negative space. From that emptiness, the composition is further developed.

The Japanese concept of mushin refers to a state of mind free of thoughts, desires, ideas, and assumptions. With an empty mind, your ego doesn’t get in the way, allowing you to work spontaneously, fluidly, without hesitation, and without emotion. The word mushin consists of two kanji characters: 無 (mu), meaning “emptiness,” and 心 (shin), meaning “heart” or “mind.” It can be roughly translated as “nothing on the mind.” This pure state of mind is equally relevant to Western artists. The American photographer Minor White believed that during the creative process, a photographer works with a blank consciousness, like an unexposed roll of film, without preconceived images. Or in the words of photographer Edward Weston: “I never start with a preconceived idea; when I discover something, I begin to focus, and then I rediscover it through the lens.”

A “no mind” activity is not forced or tense, and the art emerges without conscious effort or planning. This “acting by not acting” or “doing non-doing” is the Taoist concept of wu-wei: a continuous flow of spontaneity in tune with the rhythm of circumstances.

with the emptiness

of bare trees

the year ends

- Issa (Japan 1763 - 1828)