Research Point: Positive and negative space within art

What is positive and negative space?

The main shapes and forms within a compositional layout that are subject of the image occupy the positive space. The remaining shapes around and in between these objects becomes the negative space which doesn’t contain any real form but at the same time, isn’t empty. Positive and negative spaces create balance as the negative space can help to identify the subjects of interest.

Patrick Caulfield

Caulfield has become more associated with pop art, though he disliked being identified with any art movement. His paintings of the 1960s shared pop art’s interest in everyday life, especially in exploring modern ways of painting traditional genres, such as still life and interiors. Rather than painting popular culture, Caulfield endowed the everyday with an atmosphere that was remote, alien and mysterious. He used techniques seen with sign-writers or house-painters, using commercial gloss paints on board rather than oil on canvas.

Still life with a dagger (1963) 

Vases of flowers (1962)

His early works are characterised by flat areas of colour bound by simple black outlines. Objects are reduced to their most basic form, stripped of all unnecessary detail. (Robson, 2006)

Flattened objects are paired with angular geometric shapes, contrasting against vivid areas of flat colour. His preference for cheap and readily available house paint, applied to a flat surface, recalls the anonymous technique of the sign painter, dispensing with visible brushstrokes and unnecessary detail in a linear form (Tate Modern, 2004).

Gary Hume

Hume’s work often depicts everyday subjects using high-gloss industrial paints. The forms and colours are dramatically simplified, with colours being reduced to just two or three shades.

Vicious (1994) Gloss paint on panel

I particularly like this piece in how it portrays negative space through Hume’s patterned and colourful backdrop behind what would have been the positive space. The contrasting outline of the central form creates imagination on behalf of the viewer as to how the individual would have looked, facial expression, clothing etc – are the subjects fists clenched as the title could suggest? Is it a man or a woman? Why choose a colourful, flowered space to surround a viscious object when flowers and gardens tend to represent calm and bliss..?

Begging For It (1994) Gloss paint on panel 

Despite Hume’s technique using simplified arrangement of forms, there is some detailing within the positive space with outlines of knuckles, fingers and fingernails which show how some digits are interlocking – making it more obvious that the figure has placed their hands together.

David Cooper

Pre Info No.15 (2013) Xerox ink, packing paper, card, pencil, biro, marker pen and rubber tape
“It is a statement of the negative spaces where the subjects (the sculptures) are absent, and yet overbear the atmosphere of the scene” (Jerwood Drawing Prize, 2014). I like how Cooper has used a variety of found materials to create an image to depict an empty space which feels as though there are missing objects.

Resources:

Begging for it and Vicious Online Images: http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/gary_hume.htm

Caulfield, Patrick: The Poems of Jules Laforgue, Arts Council (1995)

Jerwood Drawing Prize (2014). Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014 & Touring exhibition. Swallowtail: London.

Still life with a dagger Online Image: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/caulfield-still-life-with-dagger-t02032

Vases of flowers Online Image http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/caulfield-vases-of-flowers-t02031

Robson, Julie (2006) Educator’s Pack, Tate. Available: http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/4655 Accessed on 02/02/2015