Negative Space in Art: Positive Negative Space, Definition and Film Use
Negative space in art refers to the empty or unoccupied area surrounding a subject. It’s not dead space — it’s active visual territory that shapes how you read the subject within it. A bird silhouetted against an open sky uses negative space as intentionally as the bird itself. The sky defines the bird’s form. Without it, the image collapses into a flat shape with no context.
Understanding positive negative space — the relationship between the object (positive) and its surrounding area (negative) — is one of the most useful compositional concepts in visual art, design, photography, and filmmaking. Whether you want to define negative space precisely, explore how artists have used it historically, or learn how negative space short film techniques create emotional weight, this guide covers the core ideas.
Define Negative Space: Core Principles
To define negative space clearly: it is the space between, around, and through subjects in a composition. It is not background in the dismissive sense — it is the space that gives positive elements their shape and meaning. The Rubin Vase is the most cited example: depending on which area you treat as figure and which as ground, you see either two faces or a vase. Both readings are valid. The relationship between positive negative space regions is what creates meaning.
In design, negative space in art principles apply directly to logo work, typography, and layout. The FedEx logo famously hides an arrow in the negative space between the E and the x. The arrow points right — forward momentum — embedded in space that most viewers read as background. The decision to place meaning in negative space rather than adding a separate arrow element is a sophisticated compositional choice that rewards close looking.
How Positive Negative Space Creates Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy in a composition is partly determined by how much negative space surrounds each element. An isolated subject with generous space around it commands more attention than the same subject crowded by competing elements. Magazine covers use this deliberately: the main headline often floats in clear space with no competing text around it. The space itself signals importance.
Photography translates positive negative space theory directly: place your subject at one-third of the frame and allow two-thirds of empty sky, water, or wall. The subject reads as more significant, not less, because the surrounding space amplifies it.
Negative Space in Art: Historical and Contemporary Examples
Negative space in art has been used deliberately since at least the Japanese concept of ma — the intentional pause or empty space between forms in architecture, garden design, and calligraphy. In ma, empty space is not absence but presence with a different quality. Western fine art absorbed this influence through Japanese woodblock prints in the late 19th century. Painters like Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec show its effect in their flat, unrendered backgrounds that give subjects a graphic directness.
Contemporary graphic art uses negative space in art as a puzzle mechanism. Logos for WWF (the panda), Toblerone (the bear in the mountain), and Amazon (the arrow from a to z in the name) all embed meaning in areas the eye initially reads as empty. These designs reward familiarity — the more you look, the more you see.
Negative Space Short Film Techniques
In film, a negative space short film typically uses wide, static frames with a subject occupying a small portion of the image. The surrounding space — empty rooms, open landscapes, featureless walls — creates emotional tone that dialogue and music cannot. A character sitting alone in a wide shot with 80% empty space around them communicates isolation more directly than a voiceover explaining their loneliness.
Negative space in art applied to filmmaking also includes temporal space: silence, stillness, and duration. A film that holds a frame for 10 seconds after the action has resolved forces the viewer to read the space itself. This technique appears in the work of directors like Chantal Akerman and Kelly Reichardt, whose films build meaning through what they don’t show as much as what they do.