#seminar notes

Gatekeeping Colour

/ Seminar Notes Colour 1

In the colors seminar we were introduced to one of the viral shades in the art scene, the darkest black ‘VantaBlack’.

“ Vantablack is a brand name for a class of super-black coatings … The coatings were invented by Ben Jensen (Surrey NanoSystems), who first publicly unveiled them in July 2014 … "world's darkest material", absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light perpendicular … “ - Wikipedia (yes, I did tip ‘em)

I was intrigued by the mentioning that one artist had bought exclusive rights to this specific paint and he is still currently the only one who is legally allowed to use it.

However, this investment would lead the artist to be banned from using other pigments, which is very ironic.

Introducing : Anish Kapoor

A.K.A The Bean Guy

In 2006 Kapoor finished his sculpture ‘Cloud Gate’ a.k.a the Bean (nicknamed so by the public, which Kapoor hated but now pretends to like it for his own sake) in Illinois, Chicago.

Kapoor bought rights to the VantaBlack in 2016, and to say the least this caused an uproar in the public and artist community.

I decided to take a look at his instagram and noticed that Kapoor has been the target of online trolling for years since purchasing the rights to VantaBlack and the trolling is ongoing till this day.

During the artists uprising against Kapoor, Stuart Semple created the Pinkest Pink and banned Kapoor from any kind of usage of this colour.

However, Kapoor got his hands on this shade and posted on instagram a picture with his middle finger dipped in the pigment captioned: “up yours #pink”

After the Pinkest Pink incident, Semple with his team of artists and paint makers, created the successor to VantaBlack the ‘Black 2.0’ which again was legally banned from Kapoor. Unfortunately to Kapoor the Black 2.0 is more user friendly than the VantaBlack.

Quiet from a Tumblr post by gay-jesus-probably in the article linked bellow.

The end of VantaBlack as the blackest black

Either good or bad news to Kapoor, VantaBlack is no longer considered the “blackest black” as engineers from MIT Boston revealed a new shade of black pigment, even darker and more light absorbing than VantaBlack.

“ Vantablack is no longer the blackest black on the market: in 2019, a material was developed at MIT which absorbs 99.995% of light … “ - From an article “The Vantablack Controversy: Anish Kapoor vs. Stuart Semple” (Jan, 28th, 2021) by Truman Chambers on The Collectors

Time Based Art

Visualizing time

Recorded as photography or video

Temporal work

Capturing the temporarity of the moment.

Vito Acconci Following Piece (1969)

Documenting the movement and routes of strangers on the streets of New York

“Scrapbook” art pieces