In visual art, horror vacui (ˈhɔrər ˈvɑːkjuːaɪ; from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 "fear of empty space", which might be represented by white spots; also cenophobia, sɛnəˈfoʊbɪə, from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 "fear of the empty") is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork

Work of art

A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...

 with detail

Complexity

In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...

.

The term is associated with the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 critic

Art criticism

Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art.Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty...

 and scholar Mario Praz

Mario Praz

Mario Praz KBE was an Italian-born critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony , was a comprehensive survey of the erotic and morbid themes that characterized European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries...

, who used it to describe the suffocating atmosphere and clutter of interior design in the Victorian age. Older, and more artistically successful examples can be seen on Migration period art

Migration Period art

Migration Period art denotes the artwork of the Germanic peoples during the Migration period . It includes the Migration art of the Germanic tribes on the continent, as well the start of the Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fusion in the British Isles...

 objects like the carpet page

Carpet page

Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular illuminated manuscripts. They are pages of mainly geometrical ornamentation, which may include repeated animal forms, typically placed at the beginning of each of the four Gospels in Gospel Books...

s of Insular

Insular art

Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, is the style of art produced in the post-Roman history of Ireland and Great Britain. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe...

 illuminated manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

s such as the Book of Kells

Book of Kells

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created by Celtic monks ca. 800 or slightly earlier...

. Moving east, this feeling of meticulously filling empty spaces permeates Arabesque

Arabesque

The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements...

 Islamic art

Islamic art

Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations...

 from ancient times to the present. Another example comes from ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 during the Geometric Age (1100 - 900 BCE), when horror vacui was considered a stylistic element of all art. The mature work of the French Renaissance

French Renaissance

French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

 engraver Jean Duvet

Jean Duvet

Jean Duvet was a French Renaissance goldsmith and engraver, now best known for his engravings. He was the first significant French printmaker. He had a highly personal style, often compared to that of William Blake, with very crowded plates, a certain naive quality, and intense religious feeling...

 consistently exhibits horror vacui.

Some examples of horror vacui in art come from, or are influenced by, the mentally unstable and inmates of psychiatric hospitals, such as Richard Dadd

Richard Dadd

Richard Dadd was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail...

 in the 19th century, and many modern examples fall under the category of Outsider Art

Outsider Art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...

. Horror vacui may have also had an impact, consciously or unconsciously, on graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

 by artists like David Carson

David Carson (graphic designer)

David Carson is an American graphic designer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the 1990s...

 or Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver is a British graphic designer based in Epsom, South of London. Oliver is most noted for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23...

, and in the underground comix

Underground comix

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence...

 movement in the work of S. Clay Wilson

S. Clay Wilson

S. Clay Wilson is an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Wilson is known for aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of "lowlife," often depicting the wild escapades of pirates and bikers. He was an early contributor to Zap Comix,...

, Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb

Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...

, Robert Williams

Robert Williams (artist)

Robert Williams is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.Williams was part of the Zap Collective, along with other underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton...

, and on later comic artists such as Mark Beyer

Mark Beyer

Mark Beyer is a comic artist known for his bleak storylines, often featuring death, disfigurement, depression, and humiliation, which contrast with his childlike, geometric drawing style. Most of his stories are about the adventures of a codependent yet resentful couple named Amy and Jordan.His...

. The paintings of Williams, Faris Badwan

Faris Badwan

Faris Badwan is a British musician, best known for being the lead vocalist for the English Alternative Rock band The Horrors, and more recently one half of his side project Cat's Eyes with Rachel Zeffira.-Early life:...

, Joe Coleman

Joe Coleman (painter)

Joe Coleman is an American painter, illustrator and performance artist.-Biography:He was born Joseph Coleman, Jr. in Norwalk, Connecticut to a World War II-veteran father and the daughter of a professional prizefighter.-Work:...

 and Todd Schorr

Todd Schorr

Todd Schorr is an American artist and one of the most prominent members of the "Lowbrow" art movement or pop surrealism...

 are further examples of horror vacui in the modern Lowbrow

Lowbrow (art movement)

Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also...

 art movement.

The entheogen

Entheogen

An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...

-inspired visionary art

Visionary art

Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.-Definition:...

 of certain indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

, such as the Huichol yarn paintings and the ayahuasca

Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...

-inspired art of Pablo Amaringo

Pablo Amaringo

Pablo Cesar Amaringo was an acclaimed Peruvian artist, renowned for his intricate, colourful depictions of his visions from drinking the entheogenic plant brew, ayahuasca. He was first brought to the West's attention by Dennis McKenna and Luis Eduardo Luna, who met Pablo in Pucallpa while...

, often exhibits this style, as does the psychedelic art

Psychedelic art

Psychedelic art is any kind of visual artwork inspired by psychedelic experiences induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. The word "psychedelic" "mind manifesting". By that definition all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic"...

 movement of the 1960s counterculture. Sometimes the patterned art in clothing of indigenous peoples of Middle and South America exhibits horror vacui. For example the geometric molas

Mola (art form)

The mola forms part of the traditional costume of a Kuna woman, two mola panels being incorporated as front and back panels in a blouse. The full costume traditionally includes a patterned wrapped skirt , a red and yellow headscarf , arm and leg beads , a gold nose ring and earrings in addition...

 of Kuna

Kuna (people)

Kuna or Cuna is the name of an indigenous people of Panama and Colombia. The spelling Kuna is currently preferred. In the Kuna language, the name is Dule or Tule, meaning "people," and the name of the language in Kuna is Dulegaya, meaning "Kuna language" - Location :The Kuna live in three...

 people and the traditional clothing on Shipibo-Conibo

Shipibo-Conibo

-Population:The name refers to two languages spoken by these ethnic groups. They are primarily a riverine people living in the Amazon basin, primarily along the Ucayali River. Contact with western sources – including the governments of Peru and Brazil – has been sporadic over the past three...

 people.

The artwork in the Where's Waldo? series of children's books is a commonly-known example of horror vacui, as are many of the small books written or illustrated by the macabre imagination of Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.-Early life:...

.

The Tingatinga

Tingatinga (painting)

Tingatinga is a painting style that developed in the second half of the 20th century in the Oyster Bay area in Dar es Salaam and later spread to most East Africa. Tingatinga paintings are one of the most widely represented forms of tourist-oriented art in Tanzania, Kenya and neighboring countries...

 painting style of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania is a contemporary example of horror vacui. Other African artists such as Malangatana of Mozambique (Malangatana Ngwenya

Malangatana Ngwenya

Malangatana Valente Ngwenya was a Mozambican painter and poet. He frequently exhibited work under his first name alone. He died on January 5, 2011 in Matosinhos, Portugal.-Life:...

) also fill the canvas in this way.

It may also be used in reference to the fear of the ancient Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 in stepping beyond their own boundaries.

The arrangement of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyph or hieroglyphics may refer to:*Anatolian hieroglyphs*Chinese character*Cretan hieroglyphs*Cursive hieroglyphs*Dongba script*Egyptian hieroglyphs*Hieroglyphic Luwian*Mayan hieroglyphs...

 suggests an abhorrence of empty space. Signs are repeated or phonetic complement

Phonetic complement

A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Japanese, and Mayan...

s added to prevent gaps.