Sculptor Anish Kapoor has acquired the rights to the blackest paint in the world — and the rest of the art world isn’t happy about it. Known as Vantablack, the paint was developed by British company NanoSystems to use on stealth jets and is said to absorb about 99.965% of light. “It’s blacker than anything you can imagine,” the British-Indian artist told BBC Radio 4’s Today program back in September 2014. “It’s so black you almost can’t see it. It has a kind of unreal quality.”
Whether or not Kapoor develops his own range of stealth artworks remains to be seen (he may have already done it). What is known, however, is that the rest of the art world is fairly annoyed they won’t get to use the stuff: “I’ve never heard of an artist monopolizing a material,” said painter Christian Furr, revealing himself to be no fan of the Blue Man Group. “We should be able to use it. It isn’t right that it belongs to one man.” That may be so, but we’d still love to see a trademark go out for Ryan Lo pink.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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Photography via Wikimedia Commons