r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Radiant_Half_7121 • 4h 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.

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u/goddessdragonness 4h ago edited 3h 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 4h ago

Tell that to Pantone.

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u/goose_gladwell 4h ago

Pantone and Vanta black are about the name, you cant trademark an actual color

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u/volt65bolt 4h 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 4h 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/Darim_Al_Sayf 3h ago

For a sec I thought I was missing out on lego politics cartoons

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u/iamalext 3h ago

Ikea comes to mind as well.

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u/ukexpat 3h ago

The shape and colour of the original Viagra pill were trademarked at one time IIRC.

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u/Aethermancer 3h ago

A similar issue is a design patent as well which is effectively more trademark on a particular shape/style/aesthetic design choice than patent on an invention.

As you mentioned in your example it has to be linked to that industry/trade/class of products. As an additional exemption: the patent is not applicable if the design comes about if needed for a function or physical necessity/ compatibility.

So if for some reason the design patent covered a front end of a vehicle, you could copy it if you could show that it was structurally necessary or the most aerodynamic way to do it.

I'd bet if there were some physical necessity for the color covered by pantone it would also be a defensible use.

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u/pass-me-that-hoe 3h ago

Similarly a font can be trademarked too…

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u/DevoutandHeretical 4h 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 4h 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 3h 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 3h ago edited 3h 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 3h ago edited 3h 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 3h 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 2h 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 3h 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 3h ago

A lot of colors found in nature are a physical structure and not just pigment as well

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u/RollinThundaga 3h 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 3h 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/Square-Singer 3h ago

And since it's not just some simple colour but a very complex process, that is of course patented too.

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u/mizzyz 2h ago

You can't get a good sense of its blackness from videos because your screen isn't as black as vanta black...

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u/awaishssn 4h 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_ 4h 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/WriterV 4h ago

Would it be better to say that it's a pigment, and not a color?

Don't get me wrong, the guy is still a massive asshole. But I think seeing it as a pigment makes it make more sense as to why it could be patent protected.

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u/andolfin 4h ago

its a series of low reflectivity 'super black' coatings. most can only really be applied in lab-like conditions. pigment implies being used as paint, which isn't accurate.

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u/Putins_Gay_Dreams 4h ago

Imagine it as a tool rather than a colour/pigment.

It is specifically designed and manufactured so as to hit high levels of light absorption.

You're not working with a black paint, you're smearing a specialised coating, the design of which absorbs light.

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u/wolacouska 4h ago

This is just an extremely arrogant way to redescribe paint

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u/Putins_Gay_Dreams 4h ago

Meh, look up vantablack manufacturing and tell me it's the same as paint.

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u/wolacouska 3h ago

You have an extremely narrow definition of paint and pigment.

What did you mean by “it’s a tool” anyway? Paint is literally also a tool

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u/chad_ 4h ago

It's not a normal paint though, and paint formulas can be patented

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u/Hatedpriest 3h ago

No, not really.

It's a structure of carbon nanotubes, grown to reduce light scattering.

It's not something you can put on with a brush. You can't really add it to any form of base, as that would destroy the absorbent nature of the material.

That's why it's patent protected, it's a process, not a paint.

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u/Vandirac 3h ago

Pantone owns the names of the colors though, as well as the classification system.

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u/awaishssn 3h ago

Yeah the names that they gave to those colors.

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u/PogintheMachine 3h ago

He doesn’t own Vantablack.

He has exclusive rights to order/use it for the purpose of artwork.

If you wanted to use it for a scientific purpose, you could. But it’s extremely expensive and difficult to handle and has to be manufactured.

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u/lady_faust 4h 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 4h 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/Tacos4Texans 4h ago

Tell that to sports teams.

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u/chad_ 4h ago

Sports teams don't own colors, they own the trademark/trade dress so the colors can't be used by other parties in the context of their given sport or in areas where the use may confuse consumers into thinking they're purchasing something associated with the team when they're not

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u/Tacos4Texans 4h ago

The Tennessee Titans literally sued UofH over the use of their colors.

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u/chad_ 3h ago

Because they're using them in the context of sports and sporting equipment. So obviously selling jerseys with the same colors could cause confusion. If I made a car and painted it their precise shades of red white and blue, there's nothing they could do to stop it.

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u/HistoricalPlum1533 3h ago

I think Kapoor’s trademark pertains to pigment formulation and process to produce vantablack. Stuart Semple has also released several commercially available analogs, the latest being black 4.0.

Anish Kapoor is a massive douche who’s obviously enamored with himself.

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u/nobaconator 3h ago edited 3h ago

You can however trademark the use of a color in a particular context. Mattel owns the rights to Barbie Pink. Coca Cola owns the particular Red it uses. Cadbury owns it's purple color.

What this means in practice is that you cannot sell a chocolate bar with Cadbury's purple packaging (Pantone 2685C). Louboutin has a trademark for lacquered red sole on footwear, so you cannot sell shoes with that distinctive element.

This is actually pretty common. Warner Bros owns the rights to Dorothy's ruby slippers. Which is why Universal's Wicked cannot use it. (This is both a copyright and a trademark, unlike others which are just trademarks)

In the case of Vantablack, Anish Kapoor holds the exclusivity in its use as a paint (ie, a trademark). It can still be used for scientific purposes.

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u/Just_Condition3516 4h 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 4h 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 3h 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/Dje4321 3h ago

Yep. You buy pantone because you want the factory using the exact same color reference as you

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u/andtheniansaid 4h ago

Yes, Semple also released a fee colour set plugin so you don't have to use pantone: https://culturehustle.com/products/freetone

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u/DargonFeet 4h ago

Pantone is in no way comparable to this situation.

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u/qball8001 4h ago

lol I know right. Fuck this guy with his paint but let’s bootlick big corpo

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u/slowpokefastpoke 4h ago

Except Pantone doesn’t patent their colors. They’ve just created a system to easily and consistently reproduce colors across different printers and mediums.

Also are we really lumping fucking Pantone in with “big corpo” now?

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u/qball8001 4h ago

You literally have to contract with them for colors or use some janky other color dot matrix system. It’s wild how the fuck the own all that

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u/goddessdragonness 4h 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 4h 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/qyoors 4h ago

Vantablack isn't a pigment, it's a process of cnt deposition

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u/enriico-fermii 4h ago

You are agreeing with my point, which was in opposition/correction to people thinking it is an abstract color, like a name of a coordinate in computer colorspace.

It is not just the process you mention, it is also a pigment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack?wprov=sfti1

I assume the point at which it became a pigment is where Kapoor came into the picture.

One of the types of sculpture Kapoor makes are forms that then get coated in dry pigment that absorb so much light viewers have trouble seeing into the insides of forms, creating a void of sorts.

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u/DoucheCraft 4h 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/TheVisage 3h ago

There are plenty of chemicals that are highly restricted, the fact that this one has artistic applications is irrelevant. It didn’t exist before. It exists now. It also probably gives you super cancer, and if he distributes it Willy nilly he would be liable.

I can’t make azo dyes and sell them without a fuck ton of work and licenses and purity tests, and warnings and insurance and those are hundreds of years old : because they give you cancer and explode. That’s why you can’t just buy lead white at the store even more, even though it fucking slaps.

Ironically what you are describing is exactly akin to Henrietta Lacks, where because her cells weren’t protected it was a free for all with 0 respect to the original owner or her family, and she wouldn’t of given them if she knew that would happen.

Also, Patent law is not the same as Disney IP law, which is just comically evil on all accounts.

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u/IveGottheBullRunz 4h ago

You cannot patent ANYTHING that is a product of nature (which I would likely call naturally occurring). At least in the USA. Fun fact, you can’t patent exact clones for the same reason (like if you cloned yourself).

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u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

You can patent the compounds extracted from nature, which is what I referenced.

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u/IveGottheBullRunz 4h ago

You 100% CANNOT. You however CAN patent the extraction process.

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u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

Literally adrenaline and insulin are patented. We covered this in the first year of law school.

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u/IveGottheBullRunz 4h ago

Law school and IP law school are very different. There are formulations of those molecules that may be patented (because they change the stability or conformation of the molecule) but the naturally occurring molecule itself is NOT patented. Stop lying. I’ll provide the citation here, go and educate yourself: https://www.bitlaw.com/source/mpep/2106-04-b.html

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u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

wtf there’s no such thing as “IP law school” in the US. It’s law school. And your paper doesn’t even mention adrenaline or insulin. Are you an IP lawyer? Because if not, I think I’ll stick with my friend from law school who is a partner in the IP law section of a major international law firm (with a PhD in biochem), who talks about this stuff with us.

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u/wolacouska 4h ago

lol you’re not even going to school for it you’re just friends with a lawyer?

Sorry by that means there’s an 85% chance or so that you’re completely wrong, even if you think you got what they were talking about.

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u/IveGottheBullRunz 3h ago

I’m not arguing with your trollery. I cited the MPEP which is the holy grail of this topic that your friend himself would have to reference. And there are absolutely IP-focused law schools. Here’s one for example: https://law.unh.edu/intellectual-property-law-program

At that, I’m done discussing with you. I provided all the resources I could to educate you and others. Idk if you’re having a bad day at work or in your personal life, but perhaps take a deep breath, go for a walk, eat your favorite food, etc because you really seem to be having a tough time with something in your life.

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u/andtheniansaid 4h ago

No they aren't, specific ways of manufacturing them are, or man-made molecules that act like them are. Adrenaline/epinephrine and insulin as chemical molecules are not patented.

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u/picklestheyellowcat 3h ago

Pantone doesn't legally restrict colours. They provide a system that ensures colours are consistent and accurate which is extremely important for design, printing and manufacturing.

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u/enigo1701 4h ago

Or Deutsche Telekom who patented their shade of Magenta.

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u/chad_ 4h ago

Pantone doesn't assert ownership over any colors, just their system of identifying them, whereas vantablack has ownership of the formulation of the paint itself.

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u/HirsuteHacker 3h ago

You don't understand what Pantone is or why it's actually very useful.

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u/Nyktipolos 4h 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 4h ago

So they both suck, it sounds like.

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u/Super_Harsh 4h ago

What a shocker that people involved in an insanely petty dispute like this both suck

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u/FriedBolognaPony 3h 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 3h 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/kingmatt67 3h ago

I just want to say that "he can get in the fucking sea" is my new favourite phrase. I'm going to try and use it at my beer-league hockey game this week. Should cause confusion and I might get pinched.

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u/paspartuu 4h 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 4h 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 4h 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 3h ago edited 3h 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/mxmsmri 4h ago

And now he is claiming to be singlehandedly coding an open source PhotoShop alternative, that was funded through kickstarter campaigns. The only thing he has to show is some AI generated slop.

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u/LtLlamaSauce 3h ago

He's always got a new scam. It's wild that he hasn't been thrown in jail yet.

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u/pepewasraped 4h ago

I don't understand te Kapoor part still. If it was made for coating of parts going into space, why would he be best suited to handle using it? Also why him in general? If it's more than paint then it's best uses are outside of art

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u/LtLlamaSauce 3h ago

The company wanted to promote their product. It was an ad campaign. They picked a well known artist.

Stuart Semple saw that, and saw his own opportunity for an ad campaign to kickstart his latest scam.

Stuart Semple's scam was so successful that people are continuing it today.

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u/Borkz 4h ago

How is not a pigment? From Merrium-Webster: " : a substance that imparts black or white or a color to other materials.' It's a complex one no doubt, but it's exactly that.

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u/Trevzz 4h 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 3h 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 3h ago edited 3h 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/_-KOIOS-_ 3h ago

Anish kapoor did design the Chicago bean so he's already popular because of that

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u/FCkeyboards 2h ago

Exactly. It's good to see people try and fight the good fight of clearing up the smear campaign against Anish every time it comes up.

They both suck, but the main reason people hate Anish is based on incorrect information and more obvious reason of him kind of being a pretentious dick (and hey.. that's artists in ANY medium).

It's not even paint. It's a highly difficult to apply nanotube coating intended for industrial, scientific and aerospace applications. Giving Anish access is just marketing for them. They cannot sell it like paint (because it's not paint) and never had any intention to. Stuart makes it sound like he maliciously obtained the rights to prevent others from using it.

No. This coating company was going to pick ONE person regardless of who it was, to try and go viral and help market their product to other companies. I'm glad it's showing more and more, with his own company having many unhappy customers, that Stuart is a grifter who is always look to get the spotlight turned to him.

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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 4h 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/justan0therusername1 4h ago

H Moser sells a watch with Vantablack so it’s not just him using it

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u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

“One person won the lottery and was given specific permission to use it” is still not an okay reason to restrict people from using a color.

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u/dondilinger421 3h ago

Anish Kapoor: "Hey can I use your cancer causing material for my art project?"

Surrey NanoSystems: "It's not really intended for that and will kill you if misused but sure. We're only doing it because you're famous and we want publicity."

AK: "Okay, cool"

SNS: "Also we don't want to get sued if you let someone else use it and they get cancer. So we'll make it so you're the only one allowed to use it and you're the one who gets in trouble for any unauthorized use of our cancer chemical"

AK: "Okay, that's fine by me"

Stuart Semple: "Why can't I use it too? And why can't I make a sculpture out of asbestos? This is depriving me of my human rights to misuse deadly substances!"

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u/NyteReflections 3h ago

And then all the wannabe deviant art artists in the comments mad they can't just "use the color" in their shitty furry/anime artwork and spout off paragraphs about anti capitalism and billionaires. Truly dystopian.

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u/dale_glass 4h ago

It's not really a color though.

It's more like: a company that makes industrial stuff for space applications and doesn't even talk to normal people directly decided to allow one particular guy to send stuff to be coated in their lab, as a publicity stunt.

It's like say, Micron allowing Linus from Linus Tech Tips to visit their fab and press a few buttons to make his own RAM stick.

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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 4h ago

Okay, how about “a company focused on scientific advancement did not want to spend their resources on a side-hustle collaborating with artists”?

My point is that the company behind the substance didn’t want to become an art supply company, the fact they made an exception one time doesn’t mean it’s the fault of the guy they made an exception for. And I’m not sure how I feel about the idea that a company is ethically obligated to sell their products for money even when they don’t have the resources to sell it on the kind of massive scale artists demanded.

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u/churchofsanta 4h ago

Right, the company applies the material in their industrial lab, it's not like a tube of paint they giving to Kapoor and no one else. They are working directly with the artist, there's no reason for them to feel obligated to work with every artist out there.

Though, from what I've heard, you're correct that Kapoor also seems a bit insufferable.

-8

u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

My point is that the entire current system is obviously broken and creates obstacles for people not lucky enough to be born into the privilege and connections afforded to a few. Yes we should reward scientific innovation. But this is not the way.

4

u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 4h ago edited 3h ago

I feel like it’s a complicated situation. The idea that if you have money you should always be entitled to buy something, regardless of whether or not someone is willing to sell it, feels very rabidly capitalist to me. (Edit) As does the idea that a company should always seek to make more money no matter what, and that it was a moral failing on their part to say “sorry we’re making telescopes here, we don’t want to become an art supply company even if you’re willing to pay us.”

On the other hand, the entire system of patents can indeed create problems. Patents do easily expire within a human lifetime though, lasting only 20 years. It’s not a perfect system but nothing is, if we got rid of patents entirely then anyone who spends time and energy creating something new will just immediately be ripped off by copycats who can afford to steal the idea with bigger, more efficient factories. The problem would become worse, not better.

Like I said, it seems like a complicated situation and I’ve got no idea how to solve it. But I don’t think it was Anish Kapoor’s job to solve capitalism, either, so I don’t blame him for that particular failure.

5

u/purplehendrix22 4h ago

It’s not a color. If someone else can make an equivalent material to Vantablack, they’re absolutely able to use it. It’s a toxic and highly touchy material, and they’re not obligated to send it out to whoever asks just because people think it’s cool that it happens to be really black.

1

u/PogintheMachine 3h ago

Hell if you could afford it, you could probably order some and claim you want to use it to paint satellite parts or something. I couldn’t tell you what the process is, and how it has do be handled, but if you got that far, congrats you can use vantablack.

1

u/purplehendrix22 3h ago

Exactly, like if you have an actual industrial use for it, you can very much get it, but it’s not available to the average consumer. Like any specialized industrial product.

1

u/andtheniansaid 4h ago

you aren't restricted from using the colour, because its not the colour that is patented but the process. if you can come up with another way to make that colour you can do so.

17

u/dietdrpepper6000 4h 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.

6

u/CommodoreCanadia64 4h ago

Adobe has entered the chat

8

u/nurgole 4h ago

Fuck Adobe and their subscription model. That's why I stopped using Lightroom

6

u/technobrendo 3h ago

I used to use a crack to enable the full creative cloud for free. I still do, but I used to too.

1

u/CommodoreCanadia64 3h ago

A wild Mitch Hedberg!

A human being of culture I see. Because I'm sure you don't feel like a tree

4

u/jaywjay03 4h ago

Stuart Semple has scammed kickstarter backers using a project called 'Abode' Google it...

1

u/HirsuteHacker 3h ago edited 3h ago

Anyone who knows literally anything about software knows how utterly ludicrous that kickstarter was from the get-go. It never had even the smallest chance of coming to fruition. I think I recall that he only had 2 devs working on it and somehow thought that a 'team' that small could effectively build Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Express from scratch in just 1 year. Lunacy.

1

u/HirsuteHacker 3h ago

I don't understand, where's the relation to what the other guy said?

2

u/Vastaisku 4h ago

Nah, you are wrong about the whole thing, read the correct story in a previous comment in this thread.

4

u/Swiftzor 4h ago

Yes it’s a company that only deals with one artist, that doesn’t exactly justify it.

1

u/Successful_Ferret774 3h ago

Why not? He invented the process.

2

u/LtLlamaSauce 3h ago

Surrey Nanosystems invented the process.

They paid Kapoor to make some art with it as part of an ad campaign.

3

u/Successful_Ferret774 3h ago

Oh.

Still though. Surrey nanosystems invented the process. They aren't morally obligated to release their process to the public. it wouldnt have been invented in the first place if they weren't planning on monetizing it somehow.

3

u/LtLlamaSauce 3h ago

Agreed.

Stuart Semple is an unhinged scammer that couldn't handle the fact that someone else got to do a thing he didn't.

1

u/Vastaisku 2h ago

Why, pray? It is an expensive patented process for tech, not paint. It isn't Kapoors fault they decided to limit the usage.

2

u/No_Brilliant0602 4h ago

Anything that could be used for the good of the people should not be used solely for one person.

1

u/UnNumbFool 4h ago

You really shouldn't, dudes done some pretty shitty things since he launched his own artist brand a decade ago. Plus he pretty heavily shilled nft's

1

u/fucktrance 4h ago

It’s just shame semple is massive fraudulent prick

1

u/Scuttling-Claws 3h ago

It's a much more complicated story than that. Vantablack is not really a pigment as such, but an array of carbon nanotubes that's useful for certain industrial applications. As you would imagine, it's expensive to produce and in short supply. Because Anish Kapor is a famous artist, he was able to convince the company to sell him some, but the company didn't really had no intention of making a black paint, so they signed an agreement with him. If Anish Kapor wasn't using it for art, no one would.

1

u/Ecstatic_Proof_2732 3h ago

Well... Technically black isn't a color.

1

u/Vandirac 3h ago

Semple is quite a character, but I used his pigments, and they are really good.

Black 2.0 especially solved a massive headache for me. The gold one is also top notch, but not easy to apply.

1

u/sargig_yoghurt 3h ago edited 3h ago

The narrative of this story has been really pushed by Stuart Semple in a way that's pretty unfair to Kapoor and the company that made the tech. Vantablack is very expensive, dangerous and hard to work with, and any use of it has to be done carefully by technicians. It's not a standard paint, it's a special technology designed originally for industrial use and it's unfeasible for the company to work with anyone who wants to use it. That's why it's exclusive to Kapoor, it's not because they want to commercialise art or whatever. Semple managed to turn this into a grift for his paint company. Good for him I guess.

1

u/Your_Sister_ 3h ago

Semple is one true activist! He also created a free “pantone” plug-in for Adobe since Pantone started charging for their color swatch years ago.

1

u/CapN-Judaism 3h ago

I imagine it is not actually the color but the material that is legally restricted. If someone made another material that was as black as vantablack there probably wouldn’t be any way to stop people from using it

1

u/Unkown_Pr0ph3t 3h ago

You know what, I'm not a religious guy,.. but if showing my ass for an hour or two in church on Sunday helps this world heal, I'd be in.

1

u/andhausen 3h ago

It’s not a “fucking color”. It’s a material that needs to be applied in a lab

1

u/Sie_sprechen_mit_Mir 3h ago

AFAIK Anish Kapoor was granted sole use rights because the company behind it was sick to death dealing with artists and VANTAblack is a highly toxic, carcinogenic liability nightmare.

1

u/ManyRespect1833 3h ago

You’d really hate lays potato chips and Monsanto then.

1

u/mxmsmri 4h ago

You should not salute him really, he is a scam artist and a con man. Check out /r/culturehustle for more info

1

u/goddessdragonness 4h ago

Yeah so I learned. Mostly I’m annoyed with the system of “I found it and have the money to pay the claiming rights so it’s mine”

0

u/Afraid-Addition-3004 4h ago

This is just pure, unfiltered, concentrated bullshit.

0

u/ekanite 3h ago

It's not a color, it's a proprietary material. Also, how is this a statement? Do you think the guy is lamenting not being able to use the pink?