Home/Symbols/Negative space of the plazaNegative space of the plaza SymbolismEmptiness as social distance; wide, ordered urban space that gathers people without connecting them.Common ThemesLoneliness & isolationThe modern lens: urban life & speedMimesis vs. abstraction (truth vs. artifice)Originality, authorship, and appropriationClass & inequalityGrief & mourningArtworks Featuring This SymbolPlace de la ConcordeEdgar Degas (1875)Degas’s Place de la Concorde turns a famous Paris square into a study of <strong>modern isolation</strong> and <strong>instantaneous vision</strong>. Figures stride past one another without contact, their bodies abruptly <strong>cropped</strong> and adrift in a wide, airless plaza—an urban stage where elegance masks estrangement <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
