In a New York Times article this week, we learned how Silvio Berlusconi, the infamous Italian politician, in the last few years of his life, purchased 25,000 paintings often from “hotlines of late-night art shopping television channels.”
Why? Friend and art historian Vittorio Sgarbi thought Berlusconi didn’t think he “would die, this accumulation was like buying up everything while he could, a sort of horror vacui (using the Latin for ‘fear of an empty space’).”
Berlusconi didn’t care about cost – he’d purchase paintings if the price was 500 euros or 150,000. Quality wasn’t a factor, these were often “mail order art.” He was simply afraid of the empty space in his life and attempted to cover it frantically with whatever he could buy on the phone late at night.
Why am I writing about this?
I suspect most of us at one point have experienced “horror vacui.” We all have empty spaces in our lives. And the Berlusconi question is, how will we fill our vacui?
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