Each December, and with annually increasing influence, the color company Pantone Colour Institute. announces the next year’s “Colour of the Year.” This year they’ve declared that for 2024, it’s what they’re calling “Peach Fuzz,” described by the company in a press release as “a cozy peach hue softly nestled between pink and orange.”

It wouldn’t matter much except that Pantone’s patented universal color matching system is ubiquitous across a range of worldwide industries. And an increasing number of celebrities, manufacturers, fashion designers, homeware makers, textile artists and retailers tend to jump to join the trend. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Suddenly a particular color, say Peach Fuzz, is everywhere. 

PANTONE COLOR SYSTEMS

This year, a number of TicToc videos are calling out Pantone for pretending to use objective metrics and surveys while pandering behind the scenes to corporate interests. It’s a conspiracy, they contend, like when Pantone chose “Greenery,” a green-yellow shade, without mentioning the evident relationship to Android, whose lime-green text messages compete with Apple’s cerulean blue iMessage bubbles. 

The whole idea of controlling, promoting, and even patenting colors gets even whackier when new colors are invented, which these days is surprisingly often. For example, when Surrey NanoSystems  paid scientists to create a “blacker black” using nanotechnology which actually absorbs light instead of reflecting it. “Vantablack” was promoted as the world’s blackest black, absorbing 99.965% of visible light. Painting something Vantablack gives it the appearance of being completely flat, no matter how 3-D it is in reality.

Gathering Clouds I-IV by Anish Kapoor, 2014, fibreglass and paint, via the artist’s website

Though it was developed primarily for its engineering application, British installation artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor immediately recognized the artistic potential – and in 2017 arranged with the company to patent its use in art. It’s still illegal for anyone else to make art with it. We wrote a whole story about this here.

Vantablack “grown” on crumpled tinfoil

Naturally, this infuriated a lot of people in the art world, none more perhaps than artist Stuart Semple. Apparently, he was very jazzed to try out the color in his art, but when he learned it was forbidden him because Kapoor had monopolized its use, he immediately planned to get even. Semple started an “open source” artist collective to promote the widespread use of new colors, including one he developed called “Pinkest Pink.” It was posted for sale on Semple’s website with this legal rider:

“By adding this product to your cart you confirm 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.”

A promotional image of Black 2.0, via culturehustle.com

Semple has long circumvented his opponent’s exclusive claim to the world’s blackest black. Semple and collaborators from across the art world and other disciplines released “Black 2.0” and now “Black 3.0” as publicly available hues. Available, that is, just as the pinkest pink had been, to everyone except Anish Kapoor. He’s also released something he calls “Diamond Dust,” billed as “The World’s Most Glittery Glitter” again not available to Anish Kapoor.

IN the name of Freedom of Color from control of any kind, Semple is now taunting the Pantone people. His answer to Peach Fuzz? He calls his color of year for 2024 “Cheap Buzz.”

When asked why he was doing this he replied: ‘Cheap Buzz is exactly what Pantone’s Color Of The Year is all about. It’s nonsense –  they pick the color and creators of all kinds toe the line. Surely, it’s time we asked the question of who gave them the power to decide.”

Of course, you will find, if you try to buy it online, the following note:

NOTE: by adding Cheap Buzz to your cart you confirm that you are not an employee of PANTONE, are in no way affiliated with PANTONE and to the best of your knowledge information and belief this colour will not make its way into the hands of PANTONE or its associates. 

Crazy, right?