34. Paint the Bean pink to annoy Anish Kapoor!
When two grown men refuse to stop.
Happy Holidays/break from your corporate overlords! My gift to you is a respite from news for the next few weeks. Today it will be replaced by a little harmless gossip.
Never have I ever wished I was in New Jersey but my friend Emily threw an event with HBO where Bobby Baccalieri (John Ventimiglia) and Janice (Aida Turturro) wrapped presents for mall-goers in Sopranos themed wrapping paper, so apparently I do now.
Holiday events are in full swing and everyone decided to have their party on December 20th. Except Alison Roman, who chose Sunday for her famed ham party. My friend who got the coveted invite said she’d send pictures of the spread, promising “I will even bring you home ham, a meat you don’t even eat.” This vegetarian might break for a little Alison Roman ham.
Planning a big friend’s dinner has never been tougher. We’re at the age where everyone has a demanding life, whether it’s kids, work, family, or that weird sore throat everyone seems to have right now. This is how Christina and I found ourselves suddenly free on the 5th night of Hanukkah.
I texted them on the side:
“I’m still down to do something if you want!”
“Do you want to go to my friend’s performance at the Jewish Museum?”
I hesitated. The Upper East Side. So close, yet so far. I had already declined my sister’s invitation to a party in Manhattan the film crowd was throwing (and good thing too, she told me she ended up staying out until 3AM - party girl!).
But sometimes you have to travel for art and this was one of those instances. That’s how we ended up at How to Trap a Demon: Immersive Encounter with Artist Tamar Ettun, which involved dancing, demon trapping, a beautiful giant balloon made of parachute and mini latke bar complete with sufganiyot.
Afterwards, we got to enjoy the museum for free, where we came upon Anish Kapoor’s early works and his use of Vantablack, a class of super-black coating that absorbs approximately 99.6% of visible light creating the effect of staring into a black hole. One of my designers at work had actually explored using Vantablack for a big installation, but we ultimately abandoned the idea due to budget. It was cool to see it in person and at large scale in Kapoor’s work.
I returned home convinced Kapoor was a genius. Two hours of Googling later, I understood he was also a petty legend.
In 2016, Kapoor secured exclusive rights to Vantablack. Not just the right to use it—the right to be the only artist who could use it. Power move.
Stuart Semple, another artist was understandably not cool with that. So he created his own pigment called the “Pinkest Pink”—a pigment so aggressively, almost offensively pink that it’s basically the opposite of Vantablack.
Then he made it available to literally everyone except Anish Kapoor.
At checkout, buyers were required to check a box confirming that:
“You are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief, this paint will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.”
From there:
A public event called: “Paint the Bean ‘Pinkest Pink’ to annoy sculptor Anish Kapoor” appears, referring to Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture.
Kapoor somehow gets his hands on the Pinkest Pink and posts his middle finger dipped in the pigment on Instagram with the caption: “Up yours #pink.”
Semple develops more products that were available to anyone who was not Kapoor, including pigments that achieve similar outcomes to Vantablack and something called Diamond Dust — “an extremely reflective glitter made of crushed glass shards that are designed to hurt Kapoor if he dipped his finger in it.”
“The point is,” Semple said in interviews, “art shouldn’t be gatekept.” A noble sentiment! But the execution? Thank you, thank you Kapoor and Semple for being two grown men who just refused to stop. All it takes is infinite resources and zero chill.
And thank you, dear friends, for reading my little side project. Have a wonderful break.
Rumor has it that Substack is suppressing free content. If you’d like to resist the algorithm pushing paid content only, then liking, sharing, quoting and restacking this newsletter will help! <3
Very excited for next week’s newsletter! We’ll hear from Betsy Klein, CNN’s Senior White House Reporter who has covered White House Christmases every year since December 2016. NBD.
