It has been just over a year since the news broke that Anish Kapoor had bought the (non-scientific, non-military) rights to Vantablack – the ‘blackest black’ of pigments – and, in the kind of petulant spirit usually reserved for the children’s playground, took it home with him and refused to let anyone else play with it.
Vantablack is a fascinating material. On a microscopic level the pigment’s filaments are 300 times taller than they are wide, so 99.96% of light that hits its surface is trapped within its tendrils. It’s no surprise that Anish Kapoor, to whose work the concept of the void is pivotal, has snaffled it up. What I find astonishing is that he’s keeping it all to himself. Mr Kapoor has defended his exclusivity by comparing it to his use of stainless steel, but I just stirred my morning brew with a stainless-steel teaspoon – am I and millions of other stirrers holding constituent parts of some massive public artwork?
Kapoor doubts his actions would elicit such a strong response were he dealing with the whitest white but I’m not so sure. Klein Blue, maybe, but technically speaking (I’m hardly qualified, but this is opinion after all) that wasn’t a stand alone pigment, it was ultramarine mixed with polymers that allowed the pigment to retain its colour when mixed with liquid and turned into ‘paint’.
I can’t imagine a younger artist, one that graduated this century, for example, would even contemplate not sharing this incredible new material. We swim in a sea of open source products, technology, and information, and most artists whose work features an online element have consigned copyright to the historical scrapbook, it’s just a shame that Kapoor’s attitude can’t go the same way.
