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AESTHETICS & THEORY 

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SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

Nothing in art is often really Something.

The image above is a detail from William Bailey’s Arezzo Still Life. Although seemingly empty and meaningless, this expanse of Nothing brings fullness to Bailey’s meditative painting. Nothingness, in this case, can be perceived as either wall or void, providing a place for the eyes to wander peacefully. His Nothing reinforces the serenity of the image.

Many artists would feel compelled to insert something into that Nothing, a shelf perhaps, or a clock, window, or poster (below, left). They would find the emptiness discomfiting and the painting to be incomplete. “It needs ‘something’,” is the commonly uttered phrase. Others might eliminate the nothingness by altering the proportions of the picture, cutting the Nothing out of it (right, below). In either case, the sensibility of the painting would undergo a dramatic shift, irrevocably destroying the economic simplicity and quietude of the image.



Nothing can ascend to the status of being Something, as in paintings by Mark Rothko. His No. 207 is little more than broad fields of color embedded in a darkly painted border. It is easy to get lost in such a picture, seduced by its softly glowing inner light and deep sense of space.



There is no need of an object-oriented reality in his picture. To introduce volumetric solids would be to erect barriers that would impede entry to the image and dissolve the illusion of it being a tangible space. One merely needs look below to see what happens when Rothko’s Nothing gets filled up with Something.

Pictures by James Rosen, a Canadian artist, are extremely spare. His Biscay Bay V is far more Nothing than Something. Yet, his Nothing effectively and profoundly implies the environment in which a few simply suggested cottages nestle.

As with the William Bailey painting above, one could add something to fill up that pesky Nothing, or remove the Nothing. And as with the William Bailey painting, the original sensation is disrupted at the very least, and possibly destroyed.

Nothing, then, can become a profound and meaningful Something when considered thoughtfully.





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