I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

“I believe in empty spaces; they’re the most wonderful thing.” Thus spoke Anselm Kiefer, the German artist who rose from the ashes of war to confront the silence of memory. His words, spare and profound, speak to the sacredness of emptiness — not as absence, but as potential. To believe in empty spaces is to trust in the quiet between creations, the pauses between actions, the breath between thoughts. For it is there, in the stillness, that meaning is born. The ancients knew this truth well: the universe itself began in a void, and from that void came light.

Kiefer lived in a world scarred by history, surrounded by ruins and questions that no words could answer. His art was forged from ash, lead, and silence, each piece a meditation on the emptiness left behind by destruction. Yet within that emptiness, he found wonder — the same wonder that a field feels after harvest, or a sky holds at dawn. He saw that emptiness is not death, but invitation. It is the soil of renewal, the canvas of creation. When all has been stripped away, what remains is possibility — pure, waiting, infinite.

The ancients, too, revered emptiness. The Taoist masters called it wu, the fertile nothing from which all things arise. “Clay is shaped into a vessel,” wrote Lao Tzu, “but it is the empty space within that makes it useful.” The cup holds water not because of its walls, but because of its hollow. The room shelters life not because of its beams, but because of its open air. Kiefer’s belief springs from this same eternal law: that what is empty is not void of meaning, but alive with potential. It is the pause that gives music its rhythm, the silence that gives words their power, the stillness that gives life its reflection.

Consider the story of the Japanese Zen gardens — landscapes of raked sand, sparse stones, and vast quiet. To the hurried eye, they may seem barren; yet to the awakened spirit, they are endless. Each stone is placed with intention, each patch of emptiness is an ocean of thought. The monks who designed them did not fear space — they worshiped it. For in emptiness, the mind is freed from noise; in simplicity, the spirit begins to see. It is not the abundance of things, but the presence of absence, that allows the divine to enter.

Modern life, however, fears the empty. We fill our homes with objects, our schedules with tasks, our minds with noise. We rush to fill every silence as if it were a wound. But Kiefer’s wisdom calls us back to balance. He reminds us that the empty space is not something to escape, but something to embrace — a necessary clearing for the soul to breathe. Without emptiness, there can be no clarity. Without rest, no motion. Without pause, no progress. The artist’s studio, the thinker’s solitude, the seeker’s meditation — all depend on emptiness to awaken vision.

And so, his words become both a philosophy and a challenge: to cherish what is unfilled. The painter must leave room for light to move across the canvas. The musician must honor the rest between notes. The human heart, too, must make space — for forgiveness, for reflection, for wonder. To live beautifully is to live with space around your being, not crowded by possessions or fears, but open to the unseen.

Let this be your lesson, child of noise and striving: do not fear the emptiness. Make space within your days for stillness, within your thoughts for quiet, within your heart for awe. Cleanse your surroundings of excess, and your spirit of clutter. Go to a place of silence — a field, a shore, a room — and sit until the emptiness speaks. For in that quiet, you will hear creation itself breathing.

And remember the wisdom of Kiefer: empty spaces are the most wonderful thing, because they remind us that the universe is never finished. What seems void is the womb of all that will come. In emptiness lies renewal, in stillness lies power, and in the open space of being — there, always — lies the infinite.