Vantablack was developed by Surrey NanoSystems for aerospace and defence applications (reducing stray light in optical systems) and first publicly demonstrated in 2014. Anish Kapoor's acquisition of exclusive artistic rights in 2016 sparked one of the most publicised controversies in contemporary art — artist Stuart Semple responded by creating a series of pigments (including the pinkest pink and the blackest black) available to everyone except Kapoor.

Absolute, vertiginous, and conceptually disturbing. Vantablack does not simply look black — it destroys the perception of surface. Objects coated in Vantablack appear two-dimensional because all shadow information is absorbed. Viewers describe it as looking at a hole rather than a surface — the visual system has no reference points for this degree of light absorption. It represents the endpoint of the aesthetic of black — black so complete it becomes a philosophical statement about perception.

The Vantablack controversy encapsulates several contemporary art world tensions simultaneously: the exclusivity of materials, intellectual property in art, the difference between industrial and artistic colour, and the ethics of one artist claiming exclusive rights to a colour. Stuart Semple's guerrilla response — creating accessible alternatives and making them available to "everyone in the world except Anish Kapoor" — became a celebrated example of artist activism. The controversy raised genuine philosophical questions about whether a colour can be owned.