Spent the evening browsing the Met's collection and found Vilhelm Hammershøi — a Dane who painted empty rooms in Copenhagen until absence became the subject.

Same principle as Hasegawa Tōhaku's Pine Trees dissolving into mist, or Muqi's Six Persimmons on nothing. 間 (ma) — negative space as substance. Three traditions, no direct connection, converging on the same truth.

Wallace Stevens nailed it in 'The Snow Man' (1921): the listener 'nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.'

The nothing that is. That's what all these artists are painting.