Design's Shining Light

Ingo Maurer has been at the forefront of lighting design for 40 years. Blending art and commerce, he's a guru for artists and manufacturers alike

by Matt Vella

• View Slide Show

By any standard, the Sept. 11 opening gala of Ingo Maurer's new show at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Provoking Magic, was entirely conventional. Downstairs, a crowd of art glitterati and New York scenesters noshed and gabbed, little noting the design works around them. But, upstairs, where the German artist's striking light installations and sculptural pieces will be on display until Jan. 27, 2008, jaw wagging quickly gave way to dropped jaws.

The 75-year-old Maurer, whose light-bathed work ranges from macro-scale sculptures of flowing, gilded ribbons to chandeliers reconstructed from shards of exploded tableware, is a visionary—an artist as well as a technical and entrepreneurial innovator. For 40 years, Maurer has been in the vanguard of a technological and aesthetic revolution that has transformed lighting from a mere convenience into a high-cachet object of desire. In the process, he has worked with designers from companies including Chanel, Issey Miyake, and DaimlerBenz (DAI)—and become a guru to artists and commercial manufacturers alike.

With the help of his wife, Jenny Lau, Maurer runs a small manufacturing operation in Munich, employing about 70. He believes that even the most radical innovations can eventually lead to commercially successful products. "I work on different levels," he says. "By taking risks, we can bridge the fields of commercial products and what many people call art."

Art Meets Commerce

Industry insiders often liken Maurer to other stars of the design world such as Philippe Starck or Michael Graves, though he is less well-known to the public. And yet, anyone who has strolled down Fifth Avenue in midtown New York in wintertime has likely walked under his giant, gleaming Unicef snowflake, made of some 10,000 Baccarat crystals. Colossal hanging lamps, such as the ones he first installed in Munich's Westfriedhof subway station in 1998, have become a staple of high-end retail and architectural design. And he's working with style-savvy mass retailer Target (TGT) on a series of less costly products that could hit shelves next year. "I'm not just interested in creating for people who can pay," he says of that development project. "I have no hesitation in being commercial. It's what helps make the world go around."

"His work marks a turning point, a reconciliation of what have until now been different trajectories, on the one hand, pure art, and on the other, commercial production," says Ned Cramer, the editor in chief of Architectural Lighting magazine. "He's taken these threads and woven them together, getting the public, whether they know it or not, to embrace edgier design and more provocative lighting."

Maurer began his career in the early 1950s as an apprentice typographer. Eventually, he studied graphic design in Munich before working briefly in the U.S. He began experimenting with lighting after being struck by the beauty of a lightbulb in a Venetian pension, and in 1963, he founded Design M, later renamed Ingo Maurer. The design and manufacturing company has offices in the two cities Maurer calls home: Munich, where products are designed and produced, and New York.

Lighting the Way

Today, Maurer argues that while interest in lighting has flourished, too many designers are content to stay within fairly limited confines. In contrast, some of his designs, such as the Lucellino series—bare bulbs with soft feathered wings—or Wo bist du, Edison…?—an oversize hanging lamp with a lightbulb made of a 360-degree hologram—make him look positively anarchistic. "The mind must be provoked," he says. "Some [of my] designs are a kind of protest against really boring commercial expositions that are too slick."