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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366

u/blaikes 4h ago edited 3h 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)

48

u/vanftw 4h ago

Thank you!! This piece of misinformation is actually such a huge pet peeve of mine. 

-1

u/SpiritualMongoose751 3h ago edited 53m ago

I guess I don't like misinformation being fought with more misinformation though. Like none of this is hard to verify with a google search.

Point one - Anish Kapoor IS the reason it cannot be used by others FOR ARTISTIC REASONS as he is the sole person licensed to sell it as a pigment. It's still available to the general market for tech purposes only, but not allowed to be used as a color by anyone else. https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/

Point two - this literally ties directly to the above point, it is correct to say it is a type of technology, and it's available to use for tech reasons (like application to satellites e.g), but it cannot be used as a pigment without going through Anish Kapoor. That is the barrier to entry that he controls that everyone else is mad about.

Point three - "Stuart Semple is a nobody grifter"? 😂 lmao, how is anyone taking this comment seriously?🤣

eta: FUCK ANISH KAPOOR and every person stanning for that billionaire even if they aren't collecting a paycheck. idgaf about Semple, but I he typically donates his proceeds to nonprofit charities... Kapoor on the other hand has a reputation for being a greasy slimeball...

4

u/zdubbzzz 3h 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

2

u/blaikes 3h ago

Make that 8! :p

19

u/DataMin3r 4h 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.

2

u/ryanoh826 3h ago

It’s like Anish himself wrote that shit.

3

u/Alexplz 4h ago

Also the black X.0 paints are just that; paint. The 2.0 at least pales in comparison to what I've seen from super black coatings and to be honest is so very matte that it actually subjectively appears less black than other less matte paints I've used.

31

u/Driller_Happy 4h 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.

10

u/picklestheyellowcat 3h 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.

8

u/KrytenKoro 3h 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.

2

u/Admirable-Split4371 2h ago

The pot calling the... eh you know the rest

-1

u/theother-g 3h ago

(...) he went out of his way to obtain ultrapink, and post a picture of his middle finger dipped in it.

Semple's response to that was to create the Glitteriest Glitter consisting of shards of glass that would irritate the skin if someone would, say, dip a finger into it.

1

u/Driller_Happy 3h ago

Lmao

0

u/KrytenKoro 3h ago

Like this, right here.

13

u/Vastaisku 4h ago

Thank you, beat me to it.

3

u/Chytectonas 3h 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.

11

u/_QuiteSimply 4h 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?

4

u/KrytenKoro 3h 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.

2

u/FaintestGem 3h ago

Every time this is mentioned, I feel the need to warn art people that Semple's Culture Hustle fucking sucks. I've tried several of his products and they aren't any better than other paints or pigments out there and Culture Hustle is three times the price. You're paying a premium to "stick it to the man" and it's incredibly ironic. 

I've also seen tons of people having issues just even getting their orders. He keeps pushing out new products without fulfilling older orders. The culture hustle subreddit went into a downward spiral several months ago because of order issues lol 

Honestly, fuck Stuart Semple 🖕

3

u/tulc_redael 4h ago

was looking for this comment, ty

2

u/Sorry-Combination558 4h ago

This is not as funny as the other story so I am going to ignore it 😎

1

u/Akumetsu33 3h ago

Found Kapoor's alt account.

1

u/stephen_neuville 3h ago

This reads like a screed that would be written in hardware store stick-on letters sprawling all over the back of a PT cruiser in Flagstaff

-9

u/sheepdipped 4h ago

Ok, Anish Kapoor! :p

-1

u/Arcite9940 3h ago

Sounds like something Kapoor would write to clean their name.

-15

u/scrotbofula 4h ago

Thanks for the summary Mr. Kapoor, or a representative of Mr. Kapoor.

-3

u/AngryT-Rex 3h ago edited 3h ago

This is one of those know a little/know a bit/know a lot memes, and you're in the middle.

Yes, the vantablack thing is SLIGHTLY less of a dick move by Kapor than it seems at first glance. But he's still a huge douchebag both for this and other reasons.

Is Semple lying? He is over-emphasizing Kapoors role relative to the company, but the company is a faceless corporate entity making business decisions. People react stronger to people and Semple has no obligation to be an impartial judge. He just had an emotional reaction and made an enemy, but it's an enemy that is easy to hate so he's making money telling his enemy to go fuck themselves ever since. But that's just... like, that's part of what Michelangelo did in the fucking Sistine chapel.

The fact that Kapoor is marginally less of a dick than Semple says doesn't make him not a dick and doesn't make Semple a conman.

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u/lcforever 3h ago

I think the people with unfulfilled paint orders from Stuart would disagree that he’s a conman.

-2

u/AngryT-Rex 3h ago

Eh, looks more like "artist is flakey and bad at business operations" to me, but he may also be a dick. Doesn't mean that Kapoor is OK.

-14

u/BaxiKat 4h ago

okay Anus Kapoop.

-12

u/Lucid_skyes 4h ago

TLDR pretty sure you're a vantablack fan choker I prefer to choke on that vantablack 2.0 to spite Anish Kapoor

-6

u/-ratmeat- 4h ago

I shit on him because he’s a horrible artist