Black 3.0 is a super-flat, ultra-matte black that absorbs 98-99% of light and, contrary to Vantablack, anyone can purchase it – anyone but Anish Kapoor.
After two years of development, artist Stuart Semple claims that his team – made of artists and paint makers based in Dorset, England – has created the "blackest black paint in the world".
"We wanted a super-flat, ultra-matte black that absorbed almost all visible light", explains Stuart Semple on the Kickstarter page dedicated to this project. "To achieve that we went right back to the basics of paint making. The problem with existing black pigments is they are all slightly reflective, so we created a whole new pigment in the lab and we call it 'Black Magick', it is born matte. We've also managed to formulate a new acrylic polymer to hold the pigment, it's special because it has more available bonds than any other acrylic polymer being used in paints. This means it can cling onto way more pigment, leading to a really dense pigment load and a depth of colour not previously possible. We have sourced some brand new nano-mattifiers which we have added, these flatten out the last bits of stray light without compromising colour".
Easy to use, affordable and available to anyone
Contrary to Vantablack (the super-black coating developed by Surrey NanoSystems that holds the world record as the darkest man-made substance), Black 3.0 is available to anyone, including private individuals – except artist Anish Kapoor.
In fact, the new paint is part of a long-running feud between the two artists, dating back to 2016, when Kapoor licensed the exclusive rights to Vantablack for artistic use, forbidding other artists to use the pigment, which was originally developed for satellite and scientific applications.
The art community heavily criticized Kapoor and Semple even developed and released what he claimed was the world's pinkest pink paint and made it commercially available to everyone except Kapoor. However, Kapoor managed to get a tube of the product, dipping his middle finger in it and flipping the bird to Semple the other protesting artists on Instagram.
This is what brought up the decision to team up with other artists to develop a competitor to Vantablack. "We think that sharing your colours with others is nice. When Stuart heard that Kapoor was the only artist that could use the blackest black, he felt sad but also a bit bad that he'd been making awesome colours and only using them in his own work. So, he started sharing his colour creations on the internet with other artists", the team stated.
They also added: "Other super blacks are complicated to use and extremely expensive. Most require heat, science labs and specialist training to apply. We wanted to make a super affordable, easy to use paint that was familiar to artists so they could concentrate on expressing themselves. We've been on a mission to create exactly that for a long while because we want all artists to be able to express themselves with awesome materials. The limits of your creations should be your imagination not how rich or successful you are".