{"id":10474,"date":"2026-07-10T09:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/?p=10474"},"modified":"2026-07-10T11:28:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:28:36","slug":"vantablack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/vantablack\/","title":{"rendered":"I have a problem with Vantablack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unlike most of the posts on this site this one has more to do with someone else\u2019s art (In this case Anish Kapoor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a problem with Vantablack (and it\u2019s not the usual one about the fact that Anish Kapoor won\u2019t let anyone else use it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The defining property of Vantablack is that it\u2019s so black that it absorbs almost all of the light that falls on it. This means that if you were to coat an object with Vantablack you literally wouldn\u2019t be able to see the object (because it isn\u2019t reflecting any light). You literally see a black space. You see nothing. It\u2019s all very philosophically fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I recently went to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London where there is a room with half a dozen Vantablack themed artworks on display. I gazed at them all in turn and contemplated the void within each of them, with each artwork being fascinating in its own right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, once you\u2019ve seen one incomprehensible black void you\u2019ve seen them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Staring at things that you can\u2019t see has got its limits when it comes to attention-holding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not being able to see Vantablack is the pigment\u2019s strength, but it\u2019s also it\u2019s weakness. Vantablack&nbsp;is so good at doing what it does that it doesn\u2019t give you any chance to work out what it is that it\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One work in the show at the Hayward featured a Vantablack sphere attached to a Vantablack surface (see the video below). This particular work was fascinating partly because by walking around it you could see what you were looking at from some angles (where the sphere was silhouetted against the gallery wall) while from other angles you literally couldn\u2019t see what you were looking at because the sphere was in front of the Vantablack background and all that could be seen was total blackness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:26px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Vantablack\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1208701533?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"422\" height=\"750\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:14px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Others of the Vantablack works in the show however gave no clue as to their construction even when you walked around them and peered into their unfathomable blackness. This was fascinating and mysterious in itself of course, but also more than a little frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want to see art as a metaphor then I think Vantablack art may be a metaphor for the fascinating, mysterious and frustrating way that we as humans attempt to look into the void and try to grasp the nature and meaning of existence, only to see that we can\u2019t make anything out at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But once you\u2019ve done that while looking at one piece of work, you don\u2019t particularly want to do exactly the same thing when you move on to the next piece which seems to be telling you exactly the same thing but this time via a black square on the wall rather than a black circle on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1022\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-1022x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Vantablack artwork by Anish Kapoor\" class=\"wp-image-10490\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-1022x1024.jpg 1022w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-768x770.jpg 768w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251-1320x1323.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0251.jpg 1490w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1022px) 100vw, 1022px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I found myself staring at the just-mentioned Vantablack circle on the floor of the gallery, pictured above. Was it a black circle painted directly onto the gallery floor? It certainly looked a bit like a rug. Or was it a hole reaching down to the centre of the Earth? The exhibit was on the ground floor of the gallery so a hole going down at least into the basement wasn\u2019t inconceivable. With Vantablack a flat surface and a twenty foot deep hole in the ground both look exactly the same because, as I mentioned, you literally can\u2019t see the thing that you\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could imagine some people being tempted to throw an object onto the black circle on the floor just to see what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thinking around this idea I decided that if I got my hands on some Vantablack (fat chance) I\u2019d probably deliberately place visible objects on the Vantablack surfaces in order to create something more than just a blank black void. For instance with a Vantablack hole in the ground I\u2019d probably place an object on the bottom of the hole. I\u2019d probably place it so that it could only be seen from one direction, meaning that from other directions you couldn\u2019t tell whether the Vantablack hole was in fact a hole or whether it was a flat surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve done a few \u2018black hole\u2019 artworks of my own over the past decade or so (search \u2018black hole\u2019 in the search box).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Below is a photo of an idea that I had some time ago, showing a room with a checkered tiled floor in which some of the black tiles are actually replaced by holes (the photo\u2019s a visualisation, not an actual artwork). In this version in the visualisation I\u2019ve placed objects in some of the holes while others are black voids. I\u2019ve deliberately adjusted the lighting to make the holes obvious for explanatory purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/checkered-floor-black-holes-with-objects.jpg\" alt=\"Black holes in checkered floor\" class=\"wp-image-10463\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/checkered-floor-black-holes-with-objects.jpg 800w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/checkered-floor-black-holes-with-objects-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-content\/uploads\/checkered-floor-black-holes-with-objects-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m sure that Anish Kapoor must have thought about this sort of thing himself and that he decided not to pursue it, perhaps because it violates a metaphor or because it says something that he doesn\u2019t particularly want to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlike most of the posts on this site this one has more to do with someone else\u2019s art (In this case Anish Kapoor). I have a problem with Vantablack (and it\u2019s not the usual one about the fact that Anish Kapoor won\u2019t let anyone else use it). The defining property of Vantablack is that it\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[39,81,55,52],"class_list":["post-10474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-art","tag-abstract-art","tag-anish-kapoor","tag-art-and-science","tag-optical-illusion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10474"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10504,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10474\/revisions\/10504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermadden.art\/contemporary-art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}