The term visual culture is more and more often being used as a reference to describe what has traditionally been called art. It has greater flexibility and neutrality as a description making it more inclusive but less exclusive thus making it also less likely to provoke judgments dependent on value such as high art or low art. This is especially true of fine art works depicting skills rather than art but in more recent times fine art can be nothing more than conceptual, an empty space created by positive boundaries something that is there in concept only.

The truth is do you really know what this image is?

It is two negative spaces being created by the boundaries of positive space an image of a field, some bushes, trees and sky with two empty spaces in the shape of what look like cows is it not?

It is not an image of two cows but a conceptual image using negative space, it is an empty space representing two cows through the positive space around them.

Basic drawing has three elements , the subject, the positive space and the negative space, in the above image the negative space is the only space being depicted. This is the space framing the subjects but we still see that the image depicts two cows with the cows being represented as empty spaces.

This next image shows a further use of negative space to create a concept.

Who is really to blame for green house gas emissions?