Two grown men fighting over glitter and pink paint sounds like the plot of an exceptionally dramatic RuPaul’s Drag Race episode. It’s actually the facts of 2016’s most colorful art feud, between British artist/troll Stuart Semple and British-Indian sculptor/troll Anish Kapoor.
Earlier this year, Kapoor gained exclusive rights to the blackest paint in the world, known as Vantablack and said to absorb about 99.965% of light, leaving many artists predictably displeased. Semple was particularly irked about the deal, and came up with a creative way to get back at Kapoor. in November he created a color he claims is the world’s pinkest pink, and made it available to all but one very prominent person. Customers even had to make a legal declaration at checkout to confirm that they were not Anish Kapoor.
So while Kapoor has now managed to procure the pink pigment, as he announced in a decidedly non-festive Instagram post this morning, he is technically in breach of the law.
“We are all extremely disappointed to see that Anish Kapoor has illegally acquired the world’s pinkest pink,” Semple said in an email to Artnet this morning. “He’s walked into this paint war with a gesture that cannot be misconstrued. He’s given the art community a bright pink middle finger. He is still very much at large. Not only has he refused to share the black, he’s now stolen our pink. Rest assured, we will get to the bottom of who has purchased this on Anish Kapoor’s behalf and broken their contractual agreement with culturehustle.com, and we will instruct our lawyers to take appropriate action against such breaches.”
Kapoor may have won the battle, but he hasn’t won the war. A few days ago Semple announced that he had created the “world’s glitteriest glitter” — which Kapoor has not yet been able to get his hands on. It’s made from tiny glass flakes, and like the world’s pinkest pink, has been in development for years. As Semple told The Creator’s Project on Tuesday, “He’ll never have seen this one coming and he’s not getting a grain of this glitter until he stops acting like such a rotter and shares the mega black!”
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram