Horror vacui
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In visual art, horror vacui (a fear of empty spaces, also known as cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork with ornamental details, figures, shapes, lines and anything else the artist might envision. It may be considered the opposite of minimalism.
Many examples of horror vacui in art come from, or are influenced by, the mentally unstable and inmates of psychiatric hospitals, and fall under the category of Outsider Art. The term is associated with the Italian critic and scholar Mario Praz, who used it to describe the suffocating atmosphere and clutter of interior design in the Victorian age. Older examples can be seen on barbaric objects such as the Viking ship at Sutton Hoo or the Ruthwell Cross. Moving east, this feeling of meticulously filling empty spaces permeates Arabesque Islamic art from ancient times to the present. Yet another example comes from Ancient Egyptian times, when Horror vacui was considered a stylistic element of all 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, Joe Coleman and Todd Schorr are further examples of horror vacui in the modern Lowbrow art movement.
The artwork in the Where's Wally series of children's books is a commonly-known example of horror vacui.
