Horror vacui

In visual art, horror vacui (/ˈhɒrər ˈvɑːkjuːaɪ/; from Latin "fear of empty space"), also kenophobia, from Greek "fear of the empty"), is the filling of the entire surface of a space or an artwork with detail.

The term is associated with the Italian art critic and scholar Mario Praz, who used it to describe the suffocating atmosphere and clutter of interior design in the Victorian age. Older, and more artistically esteemed examples can be seen on Migration period art objects like the carpet pages of Insular illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. This feeling of meticulously filling empty spaces also permeates Arabesque Islamic art from ancient times to the present. Another example comes from ancient Greece 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 engraver Jean Duvet 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 in the 19th century, and many modern examples fall under the category of Outsider Art. Horror vacui may have also had an impact, consciously or unconsciously, on graphic design by artists like David Carson or Vaughan Oliver, and in the underground comix movement in the work of S. Clay Wilson, Robert Crumb, Robert Williams, and on later comic artists such as Mark Beyer. The paintings of Williams, Faris Badwan, Emerson Barrett, Joe Coleman and Todd Schorr are further examples of horror vacui in the modern Lowbrow art movement.

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