SPACE NOT SPACE

Space is a word that we all use when talking about art, or composition, or layout, etc.  We toss it around as if we know what we are talking about.  But the word space has such incredibly divergent meanings, that we need to take a closer look at what the word means.  We might need a new word.

Space is one of the elements of art.  Our common cultural understanding is that there are two types of artistic space.  One is what we call the area of the canvas or paper.  Art is judged by how well the flat picture plane space is used.  The term positive and negative space is typically used to describe what is happening on the surface.  Generally, a dark element or area is called positive space.  And then lighter areas are called negative space.  The paintings of Ellsworth Kelly are prime examples of figure ground spatial arrangement.  Above is his painting titled “Black and White.”

The second type of artistic space is what is commonly called three-dimensional space.  This is of course the Albertli-Cartesian perspective projection system.  It is also the isographic projection systems, such as the axonometric.  Also in this category is the Choisey One Point perspective system.  The above work by Saenredam is an example of artistic three-dimensional space.

My question is, how can these two divergent, binary, approaches to art both be called space?  It seems nearly inconceivable that we can blithely talk about the figure ground relationships and the Cartesian construction and use the same word, space, as a common descriptor.

I am pointing out this lingual distinction because I believe it confuses our understanding.  In Transparent Drawing, all we draw is enclosures of space.  In Transparent Drawing, we can’t use either of these two polar examples as any sort of model.  We are not permitted to think figure ground space.  And we are not permitted to think Cartesian representational space.

Both of these cannot be space.