Stuart Semple shows: PINKIE - the Barbiest Pink, and the "art wars" over colour rights

Art, 12. Juli 2023

Stuart Semple's so-called "art wars" over colour rights.

The British artist has released

 PINKIE - the Barbiest Pink - and is making it available to artists and consumers around the world.

Stuart Semple creates elaborate internet performance artworks that explore issues of accessibility, equality and elitism.

©Stuart Semple

Art Calendar, 12 July 2023: News from the brilliant English artist Stuart Semple. He is known for fighting against the monopolisation of colours, what he calls "BIG COLOUR", claimed by corporations, but also artists. The artist then develops his own interpretations of the colours and makes them available to the general public. His feud with his compatriot Anish Kappour is legendary. Now Stuart Semple turns his attention to the colour pink, currently in the media through the Barbie film. 


PINKIE - the Barbiest Pink

Stuart Semple's newly developed colour PINKIE - the Barbiest Pink will be available to artists around the world as long as they are not associated with Mattel, the owner of the Barbie brand, according to him. Mattel - the owner of the Barbie brand - owns the trademark to "Barbie Pink" on about 100 products. Famously, the legal case Mattel v. Aqua, a pop band, and its record label, MCA, had made the art of their song "Barbie Girl" similar to Mattel's Barbie. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by then-Judge Alex Kozinski, ruled that the song was protected as a parody under the trademark doctrine of nominative use and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (source Wikipedia). Kozinski justified his decision by saying, "The parties are advised to chill."


What the artist says

The artist: "We have been making colour here in the studio for years, we have always used it as a form of protest. The Pinkest Pink was a way to contradict Anish Kapoor's exclusive right to the blackest black. Now that Mattel has used up all the pink and is suing people for using the colour, it makes perfect sense to do a new, even pinker, even brighter pink."


His colour creations besides "PINKIE", include: "Black 3.0 - "the blackest acrylic colour in the world", "TIFF", which according to the artist allows the use of "Tiffany Blue", as well as IKB (Incredibly Kleinish Blue), a version of KB (International Klein Blue). In response to Adobe and Pantone, he developed the free plugin FREETONE and "released a total of 1280 colours."


But first, please read Stuart's Semple's Terms of Use!

When visitors to Semple's Culture Hustle website order a bottle of PINKIE, they must agree that they are not a Mattel employee or associated with Mattel, and that to the best of their knowledge, the new PINKIE colour will not end up in Mattel's hands. 


PINKIE - the Barbiest Pink

Is a special blend of high quality acrylic resins, optical brighteners and fluorescent pigments. "I'm just tired of these companies controlling who gets to use colour. These scoundrels are privatising colour. And quite honestly, it's a very capo thing to do. I mean, painting a whole dream house in Malibu with the stuff when it's in short supply all over the world is just wrong." said the artist


——

Stuart SempleStuart Semple is one of Britain's leading post-YBA artists, best known for his "Happy Cloud" performance at the Tate Modern, where he flooded the London skyline with artificial eco-clouds in the shape of smiley faces during the 2009 recession. The performance was subsequently repeated in Moscow, Manchester, Milan, Australia, Denver and Dublin. Semple has held 15 critically acclaimed solo exhibitions internationally in Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles and Milan. He has participated in over 50 group exhibitions with artists such as Peter Doig, Basquiat, Warhol, Richard Prince, Ai Wei Wei and the Chapman Brothers. He has presented for the BBC and lectured at Oxford University, the ICA, the Denver Art Museum, the Southbank Centre and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. More recently, Semple has been involved in the so-called "art wars" that began when artist Anish Kapoor secured exclusive rights to use Vantablack, which meant that no artist could use this pigment. In 2021 Semple also opened GIANT, an artist-run space in Bournemouth.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc.

©Stuart Semple

Read also

©Stuart Semple

Read also the interview the artist on Alethea Talks

Stuart Semple: "I saw a Van Gogh at the National Gallery when I was 8 and since then I've become more and more obsessed with different colours, and ways to make my own paint to use in my works."


Where did your love of colour tones come from? 

I've always been really affected by colour. I saw a Van Gogh at the National Gallery when I was 8 and since then I've become more and more obsessed with different colours, and ways to make my own paint to use in my works. I suppose it's quite melancholic, romantic, and slightly angry but there's a glamour underneath all that."

Read more on Alethea Talks.

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