The first headlines came way back in 2014. British Indian artist Anish Kapoor was experimenting with Vantablack, a newly invented material said to be the blackest black ever made.
“This material is the blackest material in the universe. Blacker than a black hole. It absorbs 99.8 percent of all light,” Kapoor wrote in an email. (Artist Diemut Strebe actually created a blacker, 99.995 percent absorbent black with MIT scientists in 2019.)
Anish Kapoor? Isn’t he the guy who “owns” the colour? And forbids other people from making art with the colour?
Yes, that asshole.
Edit: if you think Anish Kapoor isn’t an asshole you are probably one as well.
No. I’m reasonably sure it’s a massive misconception. He’s the only person “using” it because it’s fragile, dangerous and requires some stupidly expensive and difficult process to apply it. It’s controlled by an aerospace manufacturing company who only lets him use it. It’s not something that can be bought. It’s not even paint, it’s a process to bind carbon nanotubes to surfaces. Kapoor has absolutely no say in who uses the stuff, and he sure as hell doesn’t own it.
Apparently the whole thing started because another artist (Stuart Semple, a known grifter) realised he could lie about Kapoor and sell his own paints if everyone thought he was the douche.
Long article if you care to read it, guy who actually made the stuff just doesn’t want to work with a bunch of different artists when he’s meant to be putting it in satellites: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/vantablack-anish-kapoor
hm. every article i found was saying he has “exclusive rights” over the colour use in arts. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anish-kapoor-angers-artists-by-seizing-exclusive-rights-to-blackest-black-pigment_n_56d4791fe4b0871f60ec1c94 https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/26/anish-kapoor-vantablack-art-architecture-exclusive-rights-to-the-blackest-black
seems he is a petty weirdo, too https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/anish-kapoor-pinkest-pink-blackest-black-paint-war-a7497751.html
It’s hard to find first hand sources tbh, but here’s as close as you can get from the guy who invented it. They decided to keep it exclusive because of how difficult it is to work with, and because they just aren’t actually in the art business.
We can’t work with hundreds of artists. We don’t have that scale - it’s just not our business. Our business is to create engineering components for satellites.
Is Kapoor a dick? Idk, probably, that’s not my call to make. I just know that Stuart Semple is probably just as much of a dick.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/vantablack-anish-kapoor
But if you read the articles, you’ll see that multiple artists wanted to work with the substance and Kapoor denied them access. Not the maker, but Kapoor himself. AND he stole the Pink that another artist patented just to be petty
The gallery showing it is in NYC.
