Quaderni di Venezia Arti

Voidness and Artistic Creation: Between Aesthetics and Ethics

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Abstract

The notion of ‘void’ has assumed multiple meanings across traditions. The Western view generally opposed voidness to Being’s fullness, whereas Taoism and Buddhism understood it not as lack, but as an active condition allowing phenomena to manifest. Void (mu in Japanese) or emptiness (kū) are not principles but the immanent experience of impermanence and interdependence. Emptiness and form, void and fullness, are complementary: the void is the infinite backdrop from which things arise. Artistic practices can express this coexistence, promoting an ethical exercise of self‑transformation in understanding reality and acting in the world.


Open access

Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Daoism • Voidness • Aesthetics • Ethics • Art • Buddhism

Copyright © 2025 Marcello Ghilardi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


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