There is a black so black that only one artist may use it

There is a black so deep that an object painted with it looks like a hole cut out of reality: it absorbs more than 99% of the light that touches it.

It is called Vantablack, and it was not created for art but for engineering: it is made of a microscopic forest of carbon nanotubes that trap light between them until almost nothing escapes. A suit painted with it loses all its folds; a face, all its features.

And here comes the unheard-of part: the company that makes it granted its artistic use exclusively to a single sculptor, Anish Kapoor. Other artists rebelled and created their own blacks “for everyone”. Never had an absence of colour set off such a fight.