After hearing of the term horror vacui, I was instantly curious of what the meaning of this phrase could possibly be. After some research, it turns out that horror vacui has nothing to do with anything commonly thought of as being something that is scary. That is the first thought that came to my mind at least. However, it translates to having a fear of empty space. An artist of horror vacui chooses to fill the entire space given because they cannot stand any emptiness. Horror vacui seems to be part mental and part art form. In my personal opinion, and artist that uses the art form of horror vacui must be very brave and confident of their work. It seems like an average viewer would accuse their work as having too much clutter. I appreciate the clutter or horror vacui because there is noticeable thought put into the filled space and not just random scribbling. The earliest forms of horror vacui trace back to the illuminated manuscripts of the medieval ages. The monks that would custom make each illuminated manuscript would fill as much of the page as possible with images around the written words. I was surprised to discover that the widely popular Where’s Waldo book series are actually horror vacui. It is ironic that an art form that sounds so serious is used to make silly, scavenger hunt books for children. It is extremely interesting that this art form has been around since the thirteenth century and has been used in such a variety of popular examples yet the the term horror vacui is not commonly known.
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