Sounds tortious!
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If you thought it was a painting, why would you step onto it? Stepping on paintings is rude.
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If 60-year-old men weren’t so hard to catch, then measures like this wouldn’t be necessary.
This was probably more humane than the “Don’t Touch” sign made out of glue.
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It would have been indistinguishable, except this dude just validated the trouble and risk. Instead of laughing at him, we should be thanking him.
ALTERNATIVELY: This is a false report and it’s really just a black circle on the ground. Only one way to find out…
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Christ, what an asshole artist.
People would throw pennies on it and spoil the effect. Also, dust bunnies.
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Or that he needed a pit at all.
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Here in Minneapolis, the “Spoonbridge and Cherry” sculpture has a little sign (not shown here) that reads “Do not walk on the sculpture.”
But I’m telling you (from personal experience) that the sculpture demands to be walked on – the sculpture makes you want to walk on it – and this is a design feature, not a coincidence. I am entirely serious, and although I can’t prove it, I feel confident that this quality is part of the intent of the work.
There it is, right in front of you, like a step to a walkway … a walkway that practically begs the viewer: “Step up! Walk on me!”
And you do! You do step up! (I did, anyway. It was just before dawn, which is how I got away with it.) Why? Because that damned cherry is up there in the bowl of the spoon, a radiant red beacon, demanding that you get close!
And then you walk up the sloping shank of the spoon, a little scared but quite pleased with yourself, marveling at your audacity … until you have no choice (well, you could go back, but that didn’t occur to me, and you shouldn’t let it trouble you either) but to hop down into the bowl of the spoon.
Which is lots of fun – ha ha, I’m in the bowl of the spoon, right beneath the cherry – until you realize that you can’t go back the way you came, thanks to the steepness of the shank on this side of the slope. So you have no choice, once you’ve had enough of reveling in the spoon beneath the cherry, but to take off your shoes and socks, roll up the legs of your pants, and wade through the pond that surrounds the bowl of the spoon.
And there you have it: the effect is complete: lured by the cherry, succumbed to temptation, and got wet as a consequence.
Go find out for yourself. It’s fun!
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Damned right. I wanted to see a guy fall into a painted circle in the floor like a real-life roadrunner cartoon! What’s the point of living in THE FUTURE if we can’t at least have that?
EDIT: Also, although I have little sympathy for the falling man considering he was warned, I almost can’t blame him for that instinctual reaction. We’re not well-equipped to not believe our eyes, or used to optical illusions causing bodily harm- I keep imagining the equivalent of a Magic Eye picture surrounding by warning signs that, once you adjust your eyes properly, turns out to be a fist that immediately socks you in the face.
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He has the worldwide exclusive rights to a chemical formulation, not to the concept of “really good, convincing black”.
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I mean, people have heard of him (albeit mostly heard disparagement of him), which I suspect is what he really, really wanted, rather than him genuinely thinking he’d have some significant artistic advantage by controlling the use of one formulation of very black pigment.
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By dropping in a Vantablack-coated pebble and measuring the time until it hits bottom?
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This is quite a good answer, although even at that eight feet sounds excessive.
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I expect adding some kind of finish might ruin the effect – and if the surface is not particularly durable, perhaps he damaged it on the way down, or in the course of being rescued. And we know how well that turns out.
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Same thing.
Is it a color at all?
This seems to be the farthest away a pigment can get from being a color.
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I have worldwide exclusive rights to the Crayola color “flesh”. That’s why it’s no longer in the 64 crayon box.
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British artist Anish Kapoor licensed the worldwide exclusive rights to use Vantablack in art, which makes him kind of an asshole, but we’ve already complained about him on Boing Boing and that’s not the point of this post.
This made me lol 
In the main museum here there is a 2-part art installation (“Void”), the bottom half of which is a large black circle on the floor. You are meant to walk on it, and become part of the art piece.
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