The Color You Can't See (Or Buy)

Vantablack is a black coating made up of CNT’s, or Carbon. Nano. Tubes.

Steve Northam from Surrey Nanosystems had a pretty vivid comparison for how CNT’s actually work.

“Imagine you have a field of wheat, and instead of the wheat being 3 or 4 feet high, it’s about 1000 feet tall. That is the equivalent scale that we’re talking about for nanotubes. The reason they work is, they're very, very long compared to their diameter. It will stay upright and not blow away in the wind, but if you then try and land a plane on it, you’ll make a dent.”

What was also exposed in this analogy reveals the hidden flaw with Vantablack -- it’s fragility. CNT’s are dangerous when handled improperly, and they can be easily broken off. CNT exposure typically happens through inhalation and symptoms include inflammation, malignant transformations, and DNA damage and mutation. Vantablack is yet another pigment with hyper-toxic effects, but a clear market opportunity allowed it into production in 2014.

As Anish Kapoor relays his knowledge to Julian Bronner in a 2015 interview,

“The nanostructure of Vantablack is so small that it virtually has no materiality. It’s thinner than a coat of paint and rests on the liminal edge between an imagined thing and an actual one. It’s a physical thing that you cannot see, giving it a transcendent or even transcendental dimension, which I think is very compelling.”

The military industrial complex inspired and funded its creation. Developed to cover spy satellites and stealth planes, Vantablack was created with military use in mind. Kapoor mentions this, but also shares some of its practical applications:

“Outside of my project, Vantablack is being developed for military stealth and technologies where one needs to restrict the use of light, such as inside a telescope where you want the light to focus just on the mirror without having wandering light particles around, in order to see distant stars.”

One could speculate that the only reason this paint is public knowledge, is because it was sold to all sides. But I wouldn’t say that -- out loud.

See, the title of “the world’s blackest black” was not enough force it into the social zeitgeist. That changed in March of 2016 when the world became aware that Kapoor had purchased exclusivity rights to use it. Well, sort of. he monopolized the artistic use of Vantablack S-VIS, a sprayable version of Vantablack. This is an important distinction, as Surrey Nanosystems has developed, multiple versions of the CNT coating. And it meant the military and the telescopes were safe -- for now.

In hindsight, we can see what brought Kapoor to this purchase,“I’m absolutely sure that to make new art, you have to make new space. Malevich’s black square doesn’t just make a proposition about non-images or black as an image; it suggests that space works in a different way than previously conceived. Whether it is literal space or poetic space, I’m sure that this equation is correct.”

Kapoor is steadfast in his belief that new art requires new space -- and he found that in Vantablack. Kapoor has been working working with voids in his art since the 80’s, when along comes this material that amplifies his ability to accomplish that. He also realized that the best way to lock in the potential of this “new space” in a capitalistic society was to buy out any competitors. So he did.

Kapoor himself is a hundred-millionaire, and the purchase of the rights to Vantablack infuriated the artworld. Comments about his monopolization were fairly selfish in nature, as they were from Kapoor’s contemporaries. They rightfully interpreted that a color had been taken off their palettes, but motives were not pure.

“I've never heard of an artist monopolising a material. Using pure black in an artwork grounds it....All the best artists have had a thing for pure black – Turner, Manet, Goya. This black is like dynamite in the art world.”

The controversy was lead by those pushing the narrative that Kapoor had stolen something from every artist in the world. But had he? 

The reality was, pre-Kapoor, Vantablack was only accessible to super-rich artist. the selfish subtext of their outrage made any criticisms hard to take seriously. Furthermore, usage-rights are always a capitalistic hazard with products (thinking of the Spiderman/Sony/Marvel struggle) as they are products to be sold at market prices. If some rich ghoul wants to buy the world’s supply of Vantablack paint, they can.

These criticisms, however selfish and biased, were articulated well, and that implanted the thought that Kapoor had removed black from the palette of every artist out there. This narrative was further reinforced by media conglomerates, who sensed an opportunity for clicks.

If you hate Kapoor soley for what he’s done with Vantablack, it’s because you were manipulated in this effort. There’s no reason for the general public to have this paint, nor would it be responsible to release it as such. It’s designed to be applied in a very specific environment with special spray guns, ventilation, safety gear, and specific disposal standards.

Vantablack remains in the hands of Kapoor, ultimately bringing him more recognition -- but some think it will come to define him. Lazconde writes on instagram:

“Take a moment to remember that the only thing history will remember about this lackluster artist is the infamous pettiness his black paint scandal brought to light and the artist’s he deprived at the time.”

But is that the reality? I’m not too sure. Too fragile for military applications, and too dangerous for public availability, Vantablack was only ever really suited for controlled use in an artistic environment. When Kapoor limited the availability of it, he reduced its overall production -- keeping the hazard contained to his own work.

Was this intentional? Nope. But thanks to Kapoor, only the people that see his works are at risk. The danger is out there to seek on your own, just visit one of Kapoor’s exhibits. That’s the solution to the controversy behind the world’s blackest black.

Or at least it was the week I was writing this. On the 13 of September, engineers at MIT revealed that they had created a substance that absorbs 99.995% of visible light, beating out the Vantablack by nearly 0.01%. I guess that’s a story for another day. 

We can now all get over the whole thing right? I mean, “artist hoards exclusivity rights to world’s formerly blackest black but is not the blackest, anymore,” isn’t exactly a clickable topic. Though I can’t wait to see who buys this one up.