This artistic feud has its roots in a nanotechnology-enabled coating material known as Vantablack. Surrey Nanosystems in the UK sent me an announcement which I featured here in a March 14, 2016 posting. About one month later (in an April 16, 2016 posting regarding risks and an artistic controversy), I recounted the story of the controversy, which resulted from the company’s exclusive deal with artist, Sir Anish Kapoor (scroll down the post about 60% of the way to ‘Anish Kapoor and his exclusive rights to Vantablack’.

Apparently, the controversy led to an artistic feud between artists Stuart Semple and Kapoor. Outraged by the notion that only Kapoor could have access to the world’s blackest black, Semple created the world’s pinkest pink and stipulated that any artist in the world could have access to this colour—except Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor’s response can seen in a January 30,2019 article by Sarah Cascone for artnet.com,

… Semple started selling what he called “the world’s pinkest pink, available to anyone who wasn’t Kapoor.”

“I wanted to make a point about elitism and self-expression and the fact that everybody should be able to make art,” Semple said. But within weeks, “tragedy struck. Anish Kapoor got our pink! And he dipped his middle finger in it and put a picture on Instagram!”

…

Cascone’s article, which explores the history of the feud in greater detail also announces the latest installment (Note: Links have been removed),

In the battle over artistic access to the world’s blackest blacks, Stuart Semple isn’t backing down. The British artist, who took exception to Anish Kapoor’s exclusive contract to use Vantablack, the world’s blackest black substance, just launched a Kickstarter to produce a super dark paint of his own—and it has now been fully funded.

Jesus Diaz’s February 1, 2019 article for Fast Company provides some general technical details (Note: A link has been removed),

… Semple decided to team up with paint makers and about 1,000 artists to develop and test a competitor to Vantablack. His first version, Black 2.0, wasn’t quite as black as Vantablack, since it only absorbed 95% of the visible light (Vantablack absorbs about 99%).

Now, Black 3.0 is out and available on Kickstarter for about $32 per 150ml tube. According to Semple, it is the blackest, mattest, flattest acrylic paint available on the planet, capturing up to 99% of all the visible spectrum radiation. The paint is based on a new pigment called Black Magick, whose exact composition they aren’t disclosing. Black 3.0 is made up of this pigment, combined with a custom acrylic polymer. Semple and his colleagues claim that the polymer “is special because it has more available bonds than any other acrylic polymer being used in paints,” allowing more pigment density. The paint is then finished with what they claim are new “nano-mattifiers,” which remove any shine from the paint. Unlike Vantablack, the resulting paint is soluble in water and nontoxic. [emphasis mine]

I wonder what a ‘nano-mattifier’ might be. Regardless, I’m glad to see this new black is (with a nod to my April 16, 2016 posting about risks and this artistic controversy) nontoxic.

Semple’s ‘blackest black paint’ Kickstarter campaign can be found here. It ends on March 22, 2019 at 1:01 am PDT. The goal is $42,755 in Canadian dollars (CAD) and, as Iwrite this, they currently have $473,062 CAD in pledges.

I don’t usually embed videos that run over 5 mins. but Stuart Semple is very appealing in at least two senses of the word,