Vantablack: Notes on the Science of an Uncanny Colour and a Skirmish in the Art World

A technician holds up a sample of Vantablack against 
a silver foil background - et voilà! an instant black hole

Image: Surrey Nanosystems

I: Manufacturing the Void: On the Science of an Uncanny Colour

Despite Spanish songsters Los Bravos tautologically insisting that black is black, actually there are degrees of darkness to be considered. In other words, there's black, there's super black, and then there's Vantablack ... 

Vantablack is an uncanny substance composed of a forest of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays which are grown on a substrate using a modified chemical vapour deposition. It is the darkest material ever made, absorbing almost 100% of radiation in the visible spectrum and creating the illusion of a black hole whenever it's applied to the surface of an object.

When light strikes an object covered in Vantablack, instead of reflecting as it normally would, thereby allowing the eye to see the object, it becomes trapped and continually deflected among the tubes, flattening out all appearance of depth. Eventually the light is absorbed and dissipated as heat.

There have, of course, been similar substances developed in the past; NASA, for example, had previously developed their own super black. But Vantablack is the baddest and the blackest of them all - the veritable prince of darkness.

Indeed, had I been the one naming it, I'd have called it Satanic black, rather than Vantablack (VANTA being an acronym derived from vertically aligned nanotube arrays); a name given by the British company Surrey NanoSystems who invented it, and who have identified a wide range of potential applications for the substance thanks to its emissivity and scalability. These include improving the performance of telescopes and materials used in solar power technology.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the military are also interested in how Vantablack might be used as thermal camouflage and increase the invisibility and all-round stealthiness of stealth aircraft.       


II: Brushes at Dawn: On a Skirmish in the Art World

Artists too have expressed an interest in this new (anti-)colour, which offers so many fascinating opportunities for deception and design. Unfortunately, however, they're not going to get the chance to use it after the sculptor Anish Kapoor proved to be (a) quick off the mark and (b) something of an arsehole; obtaining as he did an exclusive license for artistic use of Vantablack, causing outrage amongst others in the art world, including Jason Chase, Christian Furr, and Stuart Semple.

The latter, for example, retaliated by developing a strong shade of ultra-fluorescent pink - as well as a cherry-scented deep black colour - to which he attached (non-binding) clauses to the effect that Kapoor was not allowed to purchase them. The sculptor responded in December 2016 by posting a picture on Instagram of his raised middle finger dipped in Semple's pink paint.     

Jason Chase, meanwhile, teamed up with a company called NanoLab to create his own super dark colour which he named Singularity Black. Unlike Kapoor, he made his new black fully available to others artists should they wish to experiment with it in their work.
   

There are several ways to view this tiff between artists; one might see it as an example of the petty stupidity and rivalry that is, unfortunately, all too common in the creative industries. On the other hand, one could argue that it demonstrates the supreme importance of black within the art world, described by Renoir as la reine des couleurs and by Matisse as more than a mere colour - Black, he said, is a force that simplifies everything.   

Indeed, as Kapoor himself recognised, much of the fuss over his exclusive rights to Vantablack is due to the profoundly emotive nature of the colour: "I don’t think the same response would occur if it was white".

Notes

To find out more about Vantablack, visit the Surrey Nanosystems website by clicking here. 

For more details of the colourful skirmish between Kapoor and Semple, see the article by Adam Rogers, 'Art Fight! The Pinkest Pink Versus the Blackest Black' in Wired (22 June, 2017): click here. 

The line quoted from Kapoor at the end of this post is from an article by Brigid Delaney, '"You could disappear into it": Anish Kapoor on his exclusive rights to the 'blackest black', The Guardian (26 Sept., 2016): click here.