The Negative as something helpful

Negative spaces are just as important as positive shapes, so we learn in a drawing class. If a chair is to be drawn, a good instructor will help the student pay attention to the shapes in between the legs of the chairs, or the back rests, as much in the "positive shapes" of the chair itself. In the same way, these artists [New York's avant-garde artists] depicted the spiritual climate by negative shapes, but by doing so they effectively described the shape and influence of the churches they rejected. Their observations serve as an invaluable service for the church, as they gave shape to the spiritual vacuum that pervades our culture today. They are important precisely because they depict an honest spiritual wrestling within empty spaces. In that sense, art can always point to the profound, and, even in perverse disagreements, artists accurately reveal the spiritual vacuum. Makoto Fujimura Refractions 28

Within our talk of worship and music realizing less is more is so important. space created gives a sense of transcendence and that is in one sense what negative space is. Apophatic theology is a a theology of the not. God is so wholly other that being contained or even expressed in words can be a dangerous exercise. Doctrine while important and defining boundaries in which exploration is possible. Perhaps that is why adoration is truly wordless worship of God and where the visual artist and musician come into their own.