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The parts of an artwork containing “nothing” aren't necessarily meaningless.
Artists and designers call the areas surrounding subjects negative space.
Negative space can define shapes, direct attention, create balance, or make an image feel calm or tense.
Sometimes the empty area even forms a second hidden image.
Our visual system constantly separates objects from their backgrounds, a process studied in perception as figure-ground organization.
Artists can manipulate that process so viewers switch between seeing the subject and seeing the surrounding space.
That means an artwork can communicate through what the artist didn't fill.
Sometimes the most important shape in an image is made entirely out of emptiness.
© The Museum of Modern Art — Learning