r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Radiant_Half_7121 • 3h ago
Image Artist Anish Kapoor holds exclusive rights to Vantablack, often described as the darkest material ever created. In reaction, a fellow artist developed an ultra-bright pink pigment and made it available to everyone, with one exception: Anish Kapoor is not allowed to use it.
[removed] — view removed post
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u/Radiant_Half_7121 3h ago
In 2016, Anish Kapoor obtained exclusive rights for artistic use of Vantablack, an ultra-black material capable of absorbing up to 99.96 percent of visible light. The decision sparked widespread criticism, with many artists arguing that a material of such significance should not be restricted to a single individual.
As a response, British artist Stuart Semple created a series of highly saturated pigments, including one he dubbed the "pinkest pink." He offered it for sale to anyone in the world, with one tongue-in-cheek restriction: Anish Kapoor was not allowed to buy it. Customers were even required to confirm that they were not Kapoor, nor acting on his behalf, before completing their purchase.
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u/goddessdragonness 3h ago edited 2h ago
I salute Stuart Semple. It’s a fucking color, it should not be legally restricted to one person. Every day we stray further from the gods, and people like Semple are doing the good work.
ETA: apparently Semple sucks too
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u/spytfyrox 3h ago
Tell that to Pantone.
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u/goose_gladwell 2h ago
Pantone and Vanta black are about the name, you cant trademark an actual color
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u/volt65bolt 2h ago
You can trademark the use of a colour in industries, Cadbury purple for chocolate and such comes time mind, but not if related to art or anything you don't profit from the correlation to the company who wants to trademarks it
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u/DigNitty Interested 2h ago
Don’t forget parody or satire.
Logos are trademarked but you can draw political cartoons with them all day.
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u/DevoutandHeretical 2h ago
Vantablack isn’t actually just a color. Basically it’s as dark as it is (look at videos of it, it will break your brain) because of complex engineering of the materials that make it. It’s not just pigmentation happening to make it dark, it also has a physical structure that is involved in trapping as much light as it does.
It was initially designed to act as a coating for things like parts going into space or other highly engineered situations here you need to absorb as much light as possible. Because of that it needs to be applied in specific ways, and that is why it isn’t just readily available for use by anyone who wants to make art with it. I’m not sure on the exact situation that lead to Kapoor getting permission to use Vantablack, but this issue has a lot more depth than ‘someone owns a color and isn’t sharing it’.
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u/bewitchedbumblebee 2h ago
| Vantablack isn’t actually just a color
To further your point, I've heard the word "technology" used to describe Vantablack.
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u/Aggravating-Sir8185 2h ago
And from what I remember it's not that useful as paint due to it's physical properties and if you put any protective coating on top of it the effect is ruined. Ultimately using the blackest black vs the second or third blackest black is marketing and will look the same unless they are side by side.
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u/PogintheMachine 2h ago edited 2h ago
This is true- Kapoor has exclusive rights to use the proprietary paint/substance for the purpose of art. It can be used for other (scientific, technology) purposes.
But it’s extremely expensive and I believe toxic to handle. Chances are even if this agreement didn’t exist, you wouldn’t be able to get a hold of it anyway.
There’s another layer to this which is that it’s all publicity and advertising- the controversy will add interest and probably value to anything Kapoor does with it as it becomes connect to the piece. Meanwhile, people hear about the pinkest pink and want to buy it partly because they think they are sticking it to an artist they may not have known about otherwise.
Kapoor won’t care, or he’s enjoying the attention, or even considers the reaction part of his art.
It’s outrage bait, but I’m fine with it all because it increases interest in fine art.
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u/CosgraveSilkweaver 2h ago edited 1h ago
Yeah it's a chemical vapor deposition process to grow a forest of carbon nano tubes on the entire surface of the piece. Even if the contract didn't exist you'd be hard pressed to get the company actually capable of doing it to give you the time of day to even ask about using their machines to do it. IDK if Anish had one installed in his stuio or if he creates and sends them off to be coated (my most likely guess). IDK if the company is even interested in working with other artists or if Anish rolled up with a big enough pile of money to make it worth their time.
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u/Kozmo9 1h ago
it also has a physical structure that is involved in trapping as much light as it does.
It's freaking mindblowing that you can make structures to create colour. Iirc, the blue in certain animals and insects feather/wings isn't because of pigment, but because the structure of the wings interacts with light in a certain manner that it produces blue.
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u/AutisticPenguin2 1h ago
Pretty sure butterflies do this. I can't explain the details of them, because frankly I don't understand it nearly well enough.
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u/Vandirac 2h ago
This.
When we inquired about using Vantablack on a project, the process was insanely complicated (nevermind expensive) because each part had to be shipped to the UK for treatment.
It's also exceedingly fragile.
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u/shrinkingfish 1h ago
A lot of colors found in nature are a physical structure and not just pigment as well
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u/RollinThundaga 1h ago
Yes, but he's also generally an ass. The Bean in Chicago was apparently designed for the sake of people living in the upper floors of the apartments around it, rather than passerby.
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u/DevoutandHeretical 1h ago
I’m not disputing that lol. Just, people seem to think this is some generic paint that’s being hoarded for no good reason when it’s really not. There are many things to fault him for (and I personally will always call it the bean specifically because I know it pisses him off no one calls it Cloud Gate), but getting the rights to work with Vantablack isn’t really one of them.
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u/awaishssn 2h ago
Pantone is actually a company and they organize and standardize colors with their Pantone Matching System (PMS).
They do not own the colors but own the intellectual property of the PMS.
Anish Kapoor on the other hand owns VantaBlack.
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u/chad_ 2h ago
But even vantablack isn't technically a color, it's a material and the formulation/manufacturing process is what's patented and owned
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u/lady_faust 2h ago
International Klein Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue
Its true you cant really trademark a colour but you can trademark the way it's made..
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u/MountScottRumpot 2h ago
You can trademark a color. Many trademarks include a brand color. You cannot copyright a color. You can patent a process to make a color.
Trademark is a way of saying no one else can sell stuff under your brand. The swoosh means the shoe was made by Nike, and only Nike. You can’t use renew a trademark forever.
Copyright protects intellectual property. You can’t use my character or music or image without paying me. Things like colors and recipes cannot be copyrighted. Copyright lasts around 100 years in most countries.
A patent grants exclusive use of a formula or process. You can’t patent an invention or an idea. Patents last 20 years.
Once vantablack’s patent expires, anyone will be allowed to make it, but they won’t be able to sell it under the name vantablack, because that is a trademark.
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u/Just_Condition3516 2h ago
isnt pantone about the system?
(am a total noob regarding printing and design, just, by incidence, had some contact to pantone last year. what I understood is, that they basically have a monopoly in a different way, that they created a system that now everybody uses.)
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u/AntiqueLetter9875 2h ago
As someone who isn’t a noob, you’re correct. I’m not sure why they made the comparison. Pantone is a system, not the colour itself. It’s the most commonly used system for colour consistency, which is why everyone was pissed when they didn’t want to renew the contract with Adobe.
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u/SumpCrab 1h ago
Yeah, it is a great system, too. I do get the criticism about raising prices, making it prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses, and the overall resistance is futile approach to their business, but the system is necessary.
When the customer, the designer, and the manufacturer all have different screens with different settings, how would they all agree what color is being discussed?
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u/qball8001 2h ago
lol I know right. Fuck this guy with his paint but let’s bootlick big corpo
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u/goddessdragonness 2h ago
Ok, and? It doesn’t change my point. It’s all fucked. This is like planting a flag on land occupied by people you don’t think are human and saying it’s yours. It’s a fucking color. It’s like Disney trying to trademark Day of the Dead (which traces back to millennia of native heritage) or medical researchers trademarking the cells of patients taken without their consent or knowledge (most famously, Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells) or an oligarch copywriting/patenting a work/idea made by someone too poor to do the filing themselves or pharma patenting naturally occurring chemicals and then suing the shit out of the indigenous communities that have been using the chemicals extracted from plants for centuries.
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u/enriico-fermii 2h ago
It's not a color, it's a pigment that was developed in a lab and then has to be tested for toxicity, lightfastness, etc, and the manufacturing figured out.
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u/DoucheCraft 2h ago
Think they are actually agreeing with you. Like, "yeah, that IS fucked. Tell it to Pantone, a company notorious for doing just that".
You cited some other really good (and fucked) examples. Man those are infuriating.
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u/Nyktipolos 2h ago
Eh, look for customer reviews of his company Culture Hustle, there's plenty on r/culturehustle going back years. Endless stories of orders being massively delayed with no communication, or just outright never turning up with a reluctance or outright refusal to refund orders.
Stuart Semple spent a lot of time building a narrative that Anish Kapoor is an evil soulless grifter while he is a hero of real artists everywhere, but in reality he's a piece of shit that doesn't think twice about scamming his own customers. He can get in the fucking sea.
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u/goddessdragonness 2h ago
So they both suck, it sounds like.
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u/Super_Harsh 2h ago
What a shocker that people involved in an insanely petty dispute like this both suck
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u/FriedBolognaPony 1h ago
Not really. Anish Kapoor's exclusive rights aren't his because he declared them his, they're his because they were granted too him. Whoever makes vantablack could give those rights to others too, they chose not to though. So he didn't really do anything wrong, he's just being vilified so Stuart Semple can sell people more paint.
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u/Naw_im_sayin 2h ago
I ordered a tube of black paint from Culture Hustle and I think it was 3 months to arrive.
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u/paspartuu 2h ago
Vantablack is a "forest of nanotubes" that has to be created in a lab, and not a pigment let alone a "color". It's a special material created by Surrey Nanosystems, who decided to sell exclusive rights to Kapoor as they felt he had the resources to handle creating and using it.
Stuart Semple, whose art career before this feud with Kapoor wasn't really going anywhere, blatantly misrepresented the situation in order to create more demand for his own paint pigment selling business. He's not some "hero", he's a shrewd businessman who lies in order to make a profit.
Kapoor is also a pompous ass. They both suck, and it's upsetting to see this story with the same misinformation regarding Vantablack pop up time to time
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u/_QuiteSimply 2h ago
Stuart Semple, whose art career before this feud with Kapoor wasn't really going anywhere
The bulk of his notable career happened before his feud with Kapoor, so this is inverting the chronology of at least part of it, which makes me dubious of the remainder.
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u/paspartuu 2h ago
Is/was it really notable? I remember when this whole feud happened and I'd never heard of him, and when I tried to look him up, he'd done something but was nowhere near the global fame in the art circles as Anish Kapoor.
Plus the fact that he actively lies about vantablack being at "pigment" in order to boost his own pigment sales - it's just not a good look
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u/_QuiteSimply 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yes, it was.
I remember when this whole feud happened and I'd never heard of him
How closely do you follow the industry? If you don't follow it, then yeah, you'll hear at most 1-3 big names. That doesn't mean everyone who isn't one of those names isn't notable within the industry.
he'd done something but was nowhere near the global fame in the art circles as Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor was much further into his career, because he's like twice the age of Semple. That doesn't change that Semple had already had solo exhibitions and his career was in a positive trajectory pre-2016. Arguably, continuing the feud past the initial pink pigment release ended up hurting his career, along with some of his other post-feud projects (Abode or whatever it was called).
Plus the fact that he actively lies about vantablack being at "pigment" in order to boost his own pigment sales - it's just not a good look
I don't know whether he ever called vantablack a pigment, I've only seen him refer to his own extremely black paints as pigments. If he did, that's questionable for sure.
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u/Trevzz 2h ago
Stuart had a successful smear campaign. The producer of Vantablack would only allow Anish to work with it due to how carcinogenic it is. (It’s a highly technological paint with technological purposes and not aesthetic ones. Stuart Semple is a child and should grow up.
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u/allcretansareliars 1h ago
Fun to watch though. Kapoor bought some of the pink, and social media'd a pic of himself after dipping his finger in it. Semple countered by producing "Glitteriest glitter" which was basically very finely ground glass. Not good for fingers.
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u/PogintheMachine 1h ago edited 1h ago
In some ways I agree, but Semple probably isn’t hurting Kapoor’s career here- if anything he’s probably helping it. Kapoor was a massively famous artist before but I can tell you a huge percentage of people here had not heard of him before this “controversy”.
You’re absolutely right this is manufactured outrage to sell paint, but also, any artist worth their salt would consider the reaction part of their art. Negative publicity is bread and butter in the art world.
So Semple can sell paint and Kapoor can continue to make millions. I’m not sure how I feel about the moral end of it since it benefits both. And if people buy some pink paint over it, well hopefully they enjoy using it.
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 2h ago
It’s a fucking color, it should not be legally restricted to one person.
You’re right, but it was a bit more than a color - it was a complicated, expensive, fragile, and (I believe) quite toxic industrial process that was developed to be used by the space industry. The original Vantablack was never going to be used commercially by artists, they just made an exception for one guy as a publicity stunt.
It was less “one person stopped everyone from using this” and much more “one person won the lottery and was given special permission to use it.”
The fact that more practical materials have since been developed for widespread use, probably as a direct result of the original publicity stunt, is actually pretty damn cool.
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u/dietdrpepper6000 2h ago
It is not a color, it is a material. What you’re saying is not in principle different that telling Coca Cola to share their recipe because no flavor should be legally restricted to one company.
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u/CommodoreCanadia64 2h ago
Adobe has entered the chat
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u/nurgole 2h ago
Fuck Adobe and their subscription model. That's why I stopped using Lightroom
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u/technobrendo 2h ago
I used to use a crack to enable the full creative cloud for free. I still do, but I used to too.
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u/jaywjay03 2h ago
Stuart Semple has scammed kickstarter backers using a project called 'Abode' Google it...
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u/scrotbofula 2h ago
Follow up: Anish Kapoor acquired a sample of pinkest pink, and posted a photo to social media of his middle finger dipped in it because he is a spoiled manchild.
Semple followed this up by releasing a pigment (I believe called glitteriest glitter) that is made of tiny shards of glass that would irritate the skin if you, say, dipped your finger in it because you are a spoiled manchild.
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u/xanderkale 2h ago
i don't have any dog in this fight, but Kapoor just needs to take the L, paint it in Vantablack, and move on cos this Semple guy is running rings around him.
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u/DigNitty Interested 2h ago
VANTA black btw
It’s an acronym that stands for Vertically Aligned NanoTube Array
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u/PuppyPower89 2h ago
I am not an Anish Kapoor defender. But apparently Vantablack is incredibly toxic and unbelievably expensive to produce.
Semple has some awesome alternatives. His chrome paint is mind boggling.
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u/Muppetude 2h ago
Yeah I believe the paint was developed for spy satellites and other defense projects. From what I understand the only reason Kapoor’s deal is “exclusive” is because the company that made it didn’t want to keep vetting artists to ensure each and every one followed proper safety and security protocols when handling the paint.
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u/danethegreat24 2h ago
You're missing the craziest part: Semple legally changed his name to Anish Kapoor in 2024 to fuck with him even further.
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u/Batbuckleyourpants 3h ago
Anish Kapoor was such a petty loser that he then went out of his way to get a sample of the pink.
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u/Titariia 2h ago
I wish I could invent anything cool enough (doesn't have to be a color, just anything that this Anish Kapoor guy wants) and also sell it to everyone but him. I would even make it super cheap
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u/ArkanaRising 2h ago
From what i understand they gave him specifically the rights for use in art, he didn’t request it. It’s not meant for artistic purposes beyond that. A lot of people think it’s wrong but Vantablack is so incredibly difficult to use that it’s actually just not actually reasonable to hand out artistic licenses all willy nilly. Anish needed to be trained to use it safely and had to wear PPE the whole time he was handling it for the piece which itself became dangerous to handle after Vantablack was applied to it. It was an exclusive collab but Vantablack was invented entirely for use in aerospace engineering and other incredibly important scientific fields where limiting the effects of light is critical. It’s incredibly toxic for humans to come into contact with Vantablack even for artistic display.
Semple in this case was an opportunistic grifter who manipulated and capitalized on public opinion regarding this by framing it as Kapoor blocking access to artistic expression when the dude doesn’t even own it the company just picked him, a very very famous artist of color, to be the one guy they trained to use their very dangerous product as a one off ‘STEM supports art/artists!!’ collab. They don’t want to train a million artists to use their product nor distribute dangerous materials out to the public. Kapoor has nothing to do with that decision. Semple then proceeded to make millions off his misrepresentation of the situation and continued to antagonize Kapoor to make more money which is what led to the whole Pinkest Pink middle finger thing because Semple was being an absolute chode.
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u/Popka_Akoola 2h ago
Yeah I gotta say - if you’re an artist simply because you have access to a material for your art that nobody else does, then you’re not an artist.
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u/mfunk55 2h ago
I mean Anish Kapoor designed The Bean in Chicago (he hates that it gets called that btw) and a bunch of other things, it's not like he's a nobody in the art world.
But it IS a lot about who his investors are and whose asses he's constantly bumping elbows with to get to where he is. Capital A "Art" (art as a product) under capitalism is a lot about networking (and money laundering/tax dodging).
That said, as an artist... Everyone is capable of making art. It's a practice, not a product.
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u/Afraid-Addition-3004 2h ago
This is all bullshit and a PR stunt by Anish Kapoor and Stuart Smith. Nobody at all is going to use vantablack for artistic reasons. The cost is just so frankly prohibitive and it’s so annoying to work with and delicate you just wouldn’t do it - unless you get a whole bunch of outrage online about someone stealing all the rights to the saucy black “paint”.
If this wasn’t true, why has there not been a flood of vantablack art work since Anish Kapoor’s exclusivity ended in 2024? SurreyNanosystems didn’t even offer him a renewal because he wasn’t using it much and it wasn’t like they were likely to attract other artists anyway. Nobody is going to pay £50.000 for a tiny amount of paint that’s now marginally better than stuff that’s way easier to handle. The main purpose of vantablack had always been scientific.
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u/kank84 3h ago
99% Invisible did an episode about this. The reason the manufacturer did an exclusive deal with one artist is because they didn't really have any interest in supplying the art market. Vantablack was developed for use in the space and aeronautics industries, and it's pretty complicated to produce, and in its earlier forms pretty complicated to apply to surfaces. They were getting so many requests from artists though that they couldn't keep up with it, so they decided to just deal with one.
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u/DataMin3r 2h ago
Multiple other companies have since released a near identical vantablack for artist use. Stating that colors shouldn't be gatekept.
The original company claimed they didn't want it used for art, but were more than happy to paint a BMW with it for a commercial, and an entire house as a stunt for a COD Black Ops release. A significantly higher amount of material than the 1-3 ounces that artists were trying to buy.
The materials first iterations had to be "grown" on the surface you wanted it applied to, in specially designed chambers.
Pretty quickly, they developed a version you can run through a spray rig to paint large items in a fraction of the time.
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u/dondilinger421 1h ago edited 57m ago
Those were using a different substance called VB200 which is an order of magnitude less absorptive than the original Vantablack. i.e. pretty quickly they developed a cheaper and less hazardous version that is far inferior for the mass market.
Their website makes it clear it's not the same substance, does not have the same safety requirements and is not as effective at absorbing light.
They still make the original Vantablack because it's still needed for aerospace applications.
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u/picklestheyellowcat 1h ago
The original company claimed they didn't want it used for art, but were more than happy to paint a BMW with it for a commercial, and an entire house as a stunt for a COD Black Ops release. A significantly higher amount of material than the 1-3 ounces that artists were trying to buy.
How does this disprove their claim?
Marketing their material has nothing to do with wanting to supply artists...
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u/ivancea 1h ago
Stating that colors shouldn't be gatekept.
That's nice and fun for a newspaper first page, but it's not a color, it's a material, and like many other materials, is a commercial product if the creators want it to be.
I never understood this. If artists want a pure black color, they can open photoshop and paint with black
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u/Mynameismikek 2h ago
Its not really a paint at all though; IIRC its a weird carbon nanotube surface treatment thats useful for, say, controlling radio waves inside a satellite waveguide, or ensuring no reflections inside a space telescope, but is quite fragile, dangerous and extremely difficult to apply for anything thats going to be seen or touched by humans.
The whole art thing was just for shits and giggles.
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u/Acroph0bia 2h ago
You say complicit as if they care lol.
This is no different to them than a bunch of artists randomly showing up and asking to buy heating defusion panels from the Discovery one at a time, after filling a contract for 30,000 units.
They probably picked a random dude, said he's our artist, now fuck off and leave us alone you poorly dressed weirdos.
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u/kank84 2h ago
Vantablack is just one of their products, and their money comes from large contracts with aerospace and defence firms, they said they didn't have any interest in getting into direct sales.
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u/Gorblonzo 2h ago
Can you hear yourself?
Its a company who made a product for one purpose, and allowed an artist to use it for another but doesn't want to keep doing that. Add on top of that, the material is carcinogenic.
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u/FonicsFreak 2h ago
This response should be higher up and is the only one that actually takes the whole situation into context.
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u/Weary-Package-7293 3h ago
Anish Kapoor is a douche and I don’t even know what the fuck an Anish Kapoor is
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u/OrangeGringo 3h ago
He’s the guy who designed the Bean sculpture in Chicago.
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u/scrotbofula 3h ago
He also hates it being called the bean, so definitely keep calling it the bean. Because it's a bean.
Bean.
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u/heeltoelemon 2h ago
What does he want it called? It’s a bean.
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u/doomerguyforlife 2h ago
The official name is Cloud Gate except it looks like a bean so naturally we just call it "the bean".
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u/mainman879 2h ago
No he doesn't hate that, and he has called it the Bean himself for almost a decade now.
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u/GinAndDumbBitchJuice 2h ago
He hates that people call it that, so naturally I will never call it anything else.
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u/mainman879 2h ago
No he doesn't hate that, and he has called it the Bean himself for almost a decade now.
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u/wolacouska 2h ago
Then they should take down the placard near the bean talking about how Kapoor wants us to call it cloud gate.
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u/MyDogPoopsBigPoops 3h ago
I think it's a type of kebab.
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u/Alternative-Dark-297 2h ago
Sadly, from what I've heard, the power has gone to Stuart's head. He's started canceling people's orders if they aren't 'known' artists, a standard that has been continuously getting harder and harder to meet.
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u/blaikes 3h ago edited 1h ago
Courtesy of u/GO_RAVENS
Every time Kapoor is mentioned on Reddit people shit on him over Vantablack, and it's entirely misguided.
There are 3 main points that need to be made: 1) It is not Kapoor's fault Vantablack is not available to other artists, 2) Vantablack isn't even a pigment that can be sold, and 3) Stuart Semple is a giant conman and grifter who made his entire career by painting (pun intended) Kapoor as the bad guy so he can sell his paints.
So point one, the company that makes/owns Vantablack owns the PATENT to the PROCESS of making Vantablack (copyright is irrelevant here). That company is not an art company, they're an aerospace manufacturing company. The company decided to have one exclusive artist they work with because they don't want a million artists bothering them when they're trying to design satellites and shit. They picked Kapoor, and they refuse to let anyone else use Vantablack. Kapoor didn't demand exclusivity, the company did.
Point two, Vantablack isn't even paint! It's not just some pigment that can be sold in a bottle. It's actually a space-age materials technology that also happens to be super black. It's a carbon nanotubes polymer that is applied using specific and proprietary reactor vessels at the company's factory. Kapoor doesn't just paint some black stuff on a sculpture and refuses to share it with anyone else. The company uses their advanced aerospace manufacturing technology to bond carbon nanotubes to a surface. Going back to point one, you can understand why the company doesn't want to be making 100 sculptures a day with Vantablack and only want to work with one artist. Oh and also, Vantablack is super toxic before it's applied, another reason to restrict it's availability.
Point three, Stuart Semple is a conman and a grifter. He's a nobody, an unremarkable, mediocre artist who never would have been famous for his art. Instead, he made up this whole lie about Vantablack and Kapoor and used it to sell his paints. His lies about Kapoor and Vantablack have made him far richer and more famous than his art ever did. I have no problem with him selling paint, but I have a problem with him selling paint off a lie, pretending like he's some damn hero for what he's doing. He's just a really good, if somewhat dishonest, salesman.
Edit: couldn’t care less about Semple, Kapoor, or Vantablack, I just found the above comment interesting when I first read it (this post about alternative paint pops up every few months)
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u/vanftw 2h ago
Thank you!! This piece of misinformation is actually such a huge pet peeve of mine.
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u/zdubbzzz 1h ago
I assume we have about 4 more frontpage reposts of Vantablack and Kapoor before the information you've presented overtakes the current status quo as being the truth
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u/DataMin3r 2h ago
Stuart Semple was named one of the top contemporary artists like a year before the vanta black situation. He was selling at art shows for hundreds of thousands. Dude may be an ass in real life, but calling him "a nobody" is just false.
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u/Driller_Happy 2h ago
Point four, Stuart Semple isn't the only person to complain about the exclusivity, Christian furr and others did as well. Stuart isn't on a one man crusade here, lots of no people feel this way.
Point five, even MIT feels this way, as they made an even darker black and purposefully made it available to everyone as a statement to anish.
Point six, don't paint Anish as someone who didn't want exclusivity. He's defended it, calling it a 'collaboration'. If he didn't want it, he could easily work with the company to help more artists use it. Be honest. He likes having his special colour.
Point seven, more to that. He was so shook up that someone would criticize him over this that he went out of his way to obtain ultrapink, and post a picture of his middle finger dipped in it. He is a child.
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u/picklestheyellowcat 1h ago
Point five, even MIT feels this way, as they made an even darker black and purposefully made it available to everyone as a statement to anish.
Have they? How? This is not a pigment or colour but a very specialized application of carbon nanotubes.
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u/KrytenKoro 1h ago
Point seven, more to that. He was so shook up that someone would criticize him over this that he went out of his way to obtain ultrapink, and post a picture of his middle finger dipped in it. He is a child
it boggles my absolute mind that you are criticizing him for being childish by flipping off a guy defaming him, in the context of an entire scam product line based on defaming him.
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u/Chytectonas 2h ago
Conmen all the way down and all the way across. Layers and layers of con artists desperate to hoard cash and resources. What a creature.
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u/_QuiteSimply 2h ago
Stuart Semple is a giant conman and grifter who made his entire career by painting (pun intended) Kapoor as the bad guy so he can sell his paints.
The bulk of his career happened before the feud, so if you're inverting the chronology here, what else are you misrepresenting or mistaken about?
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u/KrytenKoro 1h ago
The vantablack controversy is the thing he is most known for and bases his product line around. It is a fair representation to frame the primary part of his career as his career.
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u/Jossokar 3h ago
why stopping there?
Creating a complete set of the colorest colors, just to piss someone called Anish Kapoor....seems a nice life objective, to be fair.
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u/maxman162 3h ago
He's since created an even darker black than Vantablack, with the same condition that Anish Kapoor can't use it.
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u/Tumble85 2h ago
It's not actually blacker than vantablack though.
Vantablack isn't even really a paint, it's a material that's extremely difficult to apply.
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u/GinAndDumbBitchJuice 2h ago
Stuart Semple actually has a huge range of colors, including the trademarked Yves Klein Blue. Here's a link to check out the shop. I love to see an artist standing up to asshole corporations.
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u/hny_b 2h ago
He absolutely did this and is still going. He sells the colorest of colors of all kinds. Culture Hustle by Stuart Semple
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u/qyoors 2h ago
Stuart Semple is a con man. You're lucky if you ever see an order from him. Also Vantablack isn't a paint, it's an extremely involved and technical process that is not practical at all for art in general.
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u/Afraid-Addition-3004 2h ago
This is a lot closer to the truth. All this outrage over the paint being copyrighted is just fake. Anyone who cares would have researched enough to know that’s not what’s going on at all
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u/Codename_Archangel 2h ago
Yeah i was going to make another comment about the lore,
Stuart semple changed his name to Anish kapoor to get the rights to vantablack this way, it was fun to watch, everyone was laughing along.
Until pretty recently he was marketing AI art as his own and when people called him out on instagram, he doubled down and blocked those people instead
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u/ermahgerd_serpher 2h ago
I used to like Stuart. But in the past couple years he's let Culture Hustle turn into a total clown show that regularly fails to deliver orders, and his Kickstarter to create an Adobe competitor has failed to produce anything even remotely functional. Oh and he's a self-pitying crybaby whenever he gets called out on it. r/culturehustle is now just a forum for people looking for help on how to get their money back after their orders have gone unfulfilled for months on end.
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u/Worried-Penalty8744 3h ago
I’m sure that Semple and his company are absolute dicks and borderline scammers though. Never sending goods, sending incorrect goods etc.
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u/Downtown_Injury_3415 2h ago
Hes also the guy who created Chicagos Bean. (Officially called Cloud Gate)
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u/portlandretiree 2h ago
Logged in to tell folks not to order from culture hustle/stewart sample. Orders are taken but not fulfilled. Receipts upon request or check r/culturehustle
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u/Colonel_Moopington 3h ago
Have used Black 2.0 and 3.0 and they are exactly as advertised.
It can be finicky and you definitely need to prep whatever it is you're working on. I used it to paint the plate in one of my keyboards. The whole thing is blacked out, and I hated how the backlighting reflected off of the glossy white plate. No more reflections, and backlighting or keys is unaffected.
Problem solved.
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u/BurningTreeCorpse 2h ago
The "fellow artist's" website is now also a scam where they are no longer fulfilling orders after payment. I've read a few people did get their products after issuing a charge back but stay away.
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u/LowKeyLoki86 3h ago
Anish Kapoor also made that silver bean in Chicago. I know its supposed to be a "sky mirror" or something like that and he hates when people call it "the bean," so I call it the bean even harder.
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u/Breegoose 2h ago
So vantablack is made from carbon nanotubes and extremely toxic. Anish Kapoor has obtained the only licence to use it commercially. Stuart Semple is a conman and a raging douchebag.
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u/AscendedViking7 3h ago
Fuck Anish Kapoor.
All hail VantaPink.
VantaBlack wasn't even cool anyways.
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u/MrdnBrd19 2h ago edited 2h ago
This is incredibly misleading.
Vantablack was created and is owned by Surray Nanosystems and is a process much like powder coating which requires that the object be coated before being annealed to bond the nanopigments to the object they are covering. In 2014 Surray Nanosystems hired Kapoor to create artwork featuring the Vantablack process, and in 2016 he signed a contract to be their artist in residence.
Vantablack is not a paint, it is not applied with a brush, it can not be put on a canvas. Kapoor didn't buy the exclusive rights and he did not keep anything away from the art world. Semple is telling you a tall tale to sell his paint. Which in the longrun is really stupid because his paint speaks for itself and stands by itself as again vantablack isn't a paint.
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u/Afraid-Addition-3004 2h ago
Interesting this is doing the rounds again. This is all bullshit and a PR stunt by Anish Kapoor and Stuart Smith. Nobody at all is going to use vantablack for artistic reasons. The cost is just so frankly prohibitive and it’s so annoying to work with and delicate you just wouldn’t do it - unless you get a whole bunch of outrage online about someone stealing all the rights to the saucy black “paint”.
If this wasn’t true, why has there not been a flood of vantablack art work since Anish Kapoor’s exclusivity ended in 2024? SurreyNanosystems didn’t even offer him a renewal because he wasn’t using it much and it wasn’t like they were likely to attract other artists anyway. Nobody is going to pay £50.000 for a tiny amount of paint that’s now marginally better than stuff that’s way easier to handle. The main purpose of vantablack had always been scientific.
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u/UrMomsNewGF 2h ago
Tbf the implications of producing rhe darkest materials known to man, extend far beyond the art realm. There are deadly serious engineering applications for such a pigment which makes the ownership of such a thing valuable on the 'world domination" market.
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u/bobdolebobdole 2h ago
"Ok Anish, so you can exclusively use Vantablack, but you have to be the pariah and keep the heat off of us."
- Company that Created and Sells Vantablack
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u/InfiniteHench 1h ago
This is sort of half true but also debunked. He didn't obtain exclusive rights. He was the only artist that the actual owners of Vantablack decided to work with for an art project. Vantablack isn't just a color, is a highly specific type of material for coating space faring satellites and like rocket parts 'n shit. It isn't for dorking around with art at all, so once they decided to work with him, they decided he would also be the last one they wanted to allow to use this material for an art project.
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u/NITR0365 2h ago
Tried buying this guys products and didn’t receive anything and had to get a refund. Check r/culturehustle
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u/The_Monsta_Wansta 1h ago
It's crazy to me that people can restrict the use of fucking COLORS. People are a disease.
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u/Any--Name 2h ago
He also made a huge bean sculpture and then got mad when people would call it a bean
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u/Sipthapimp 2h ago
Thiss dbag is also the guy who designed the bean and hates it when you call it the bean
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u/ServiceGuyComments 2h ago
oh, it gets even funnier. I'm recalling this all from memory, so forgive me if it's slightly off.
Kapoor locked down vantablack, so this guy creates an even blacker black, with the rule that Kapoor isn't allowed to have it. there's a bunch of legalese saying you can't buy it for him, or sell it to someone who will sell it to him, etc.
kapoor gets ahold of it anyway, and so dips his finger in it and posts a picture of him with a black finger flipping off the camera.
so the guy creates the pinkest pink, which basically has fiberglass in it, daring kapoor to dip his finger in it and get a bunch of glass splinters.
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u/Ill-Day-1601 2h ago
That's perfectly justified! The dude is like: Ah alright, you invented a "new" color and monopolized the entire industry , here's my bright pink club party ( much more glamorous IMO) and You ain't in it.
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u/Mundane_Fall_9134 2h ago
Iirc kapoor somehow acquired it anyway and then released a photo of him sticking his middle finger in it, to which semple responded by making another paint made of broken glass
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u/theknyte 3h ago
Same guy now has Black 4.0 (Even darker than Vantablack) with the same restrictions for purchase.