The Illuminated Man

Born in 1932, Ingo Maurer trained in typography and worked as a graphic designer before making his first light fitting in 1966. He now has more than 80 fixtures in production, nearly all of them designed and manufactured at his Munich base. Maurer's best-known pieces include the winged lightbulb Lucellino (1992) and the chandeliers made from broken crockery and leaves of paper, respectively titled Porca Miseria! (1994) and Zettel'z (1997). He has also created numerous illuminations for a variety of public and private spaces, including projects for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Paris department store Galerie Lafayette. His exhibition at the Vitra Museum, Berlin will be touring to Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Hornu this year, and to Manchester in 2005.

Emily King: How did you become interested in light, and in the work of Thomas Edison?

Ingo Maurer: I admire what Edison achieved, and I am fascinated by his career. He was an incredible man - very complex, and probably also very unpleasant at times. Eighteen years ago I wrote a story for an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre. I had an idea for a nightmare scenario in which Edison's beautiful lamp is covered with a lampshade, the French word for which is abat-jour - and this creates a kind of play on words, since abattre le jour means literally 'to kill the day'. But ultimately my passion is the lightbulb itself. I think it is the most perfect symbiosis of poetry and industry. And it has become an everyday object; we are all used to it, no longer conscious of what an achievement it is. We take it too much for granted, switching the light on and off. For me that is still a kind of magic.

EK: Are some of your lights more about the object and others more about the light that they cast, or do you not really make such distinctions?

IM: The major thing should be the quality of the light they give. The first light I ever made was a single giant lightbulb, and what I was interested in was the shape. Now when I do something, I consider the light first and then the shape of the bulb.

EK: What kind of light did your first design, that big lightbulb (Bulb 1966), give?

IM: Well, it was quite an ordinary white light, similar to what most people have today. I find this very disappointing. I thought we had gone through a time in the late 1980s and early '90s when people had become more sensitive to light, wanting it to have another dimension, something a bit more spiritual. Now they have mainly these white glass globes, which are like lights that I designed right at the beginning. They don't give any dimension to the light. I like light that you can walk through and also with a clear shadow to it. I like the profusion of light, the kind of tenderness a light can have.

EK: Would you say that there have been fashions in lighting?

IM: In terms of the light quality itself? Yes, there have.

EK: How has it changed?

IM: There are exceptions, but generally, at the moment it's what we call in German a Brei - a kind of a porridge or pulp without differentiation. I am so disappointed with the way some of the big-name designers who used to be heroes of mine, treat light nowadays, how banal it is.

EK: Is there a reason for that?

IM: Yes, the market and marketing.

EK: Why would marketing promote bland light?

IM: Because it is less complicated. Our products are complicated; it is difficult to achieve that quality.

EK: Are you ever led by thoughts of what will sell?

IM: At the beginning I did lamps with lampshades. At that time, in the mid-1960s, there were a lot of nouveaux riches, so I designed lights with big lampshades and shiny Perspex or crystal bases. Internally we called these lights the 'Puff' programme - Puff is German for brothel. And then, when they became successful, I had eight women employed making nothing but lampshades. I also had the modern thing going on alongside, but I kept the Puff programme going because it gave those women a job. I think it is very important to feel socially responsible for the people you work with.

EK: When were you able to give up the lampshades?

IM: Oh, around the mid-70s.

EK: Could you characterize a 1960s, '70s or '80s quality of light? If I think of the 1980s, I always associate it with slats of light, harsh contrasts between light and shade. I don't know if that is accurate, but that's just my memory.

IM: Yes, that was when all these kinds of tracks of gallery lighting appeared. I thought that was really a mistake, I agree with you. Well, the late '60s were dominated by the Italians with their globes. And of course that kind of feeling is back and I hate it - I cannot tell you how much I hate the '60s and what young people take from that decade!

EK: But what about the light with the marble base and the sweeping arc, the Arco light (1962) designed by Achille Castiglione?

IM: Yes of course, it is wonderful.

EK: But that is very '60s ...

IM: I don't see it that way. But what I don't like, and Castiglione has been a big hero of mine, is that with the actual light he could have made more effort to create a really beautiful effect. In the centre he just had a naked lightbulb. If he had put another reflector inside, or something like that, it could have been a much better light.

EK: So you are talking about the quality of the light?

IM: Yes.

EK: What is the relationship between artificial and natural light?

IM: I do not think there is a relationship; they are two different things. There is one point where they merge into each other, at twilight, when people turn on the lights and create a kind of mixture. You sense the force of the sun outside, but here, inside, you switch on an artificial light.

EK: Are you trying to imitate natural light?

IM: No, I am not trying to imitate it at all. I think that artificial light is such an achievement. We can really worship it, if it is used in the right way. But most people use it wrongly, by just putting a chandelier right up near the ceiling, not floating it for instance, and using dreary lightbulbs. A lot of people are unhappy because they don't have the right light.

EK: Does it pain you to see that?

IM: Yes. I want to suggest, well, how about if you had more power? Or, how about having the light source below your eyeball? Or, how about using a reflection? People should play with light and become conscious of it; it is a great game to play.

EK: How would you improve the light in most rooms?

IM: If I was being clever, I would say 'Buy an Ingo Maurer light', but I won't. Everyone has a specific need for a specific light, so there are really no rules. Well, the only hard and fast rule is to avoid glare. I personally like light that is really low, which gives the feeling you are floating on a carpet of light.

EK: What is the best way to light the urban environment?

IM: There is no best way, but I think that it is easy for the environment to be overpowered by light. So many buildings are killed with light, flattened by it; that is a major mistake. Buildings usually have some kind of profile, it is better to light them from the side and give the whole building more of a body. Also, I like it if the light is shot against a reflector and then on to the building.

EK: How does that change the quality of the light?

IM: Well, it is not as direct, and on the reflector you can add a golden tone to lend warmth. Of course, you can have a gel on the front of the light, but that doesn't work as well. I like light that is not aggressive; a reflector makes it more tender. When you light buildings, you also have to be aware of shadow. At the Grand Palais in Luxembourg, which has a Renaissance façade with a lot of profiles, I lit it only from one side. That way, all the profiles create a shadow and that gives an additional depth to the building. This is a good way of making a building more alive.

EK: You very rarely see shadows in cities.

IM: Yes, people try to avoid shadows. When you play with light, you can sometimes have real problems with the shadow - it can be very strong and destructive. But that is the finesse of it. When you are in Tate Modern and you look across the Thames, St Paul's Cathedral is so badly lit - my God! London does not have a fantastic lighting landscape. Prague is much better.

EK: Have you ever lit any public art?

IM: I was asked to light a sculpture by Richard Serra. As you come from the airport in Luxembourg, he had these seven big pieces, each 20 metres high. I wanted to have light on top of it, just very soft. Serra very much agreed with what I had in mind.

EK: Would it have cast a heavy shadow?

IM: No, very gentle. I wanted to give him the freedom of the spectacle, the idea that his sculpture might go on forever, disappearing gradually. He liked it very much, we tried it out and it would have worked very well. But the Luxembourg authorities didn't like the change. Now they light it from below and it looks very fascistic; it's terrible, awful.

EK: Are people usually very conservative about lighting art?

IM: Yes, the first question I ask private clients is, 'Do you want to emphasize the art - spotlights or something? What is your feeling?' That is always the first test question. If they say, 'Yes, I want to emphasize it', I think, 'Oh no!' I believe that if you are wealthy enough and you have a fantastic art collection, you don't need to flatter it with light. If you have good lighting in the room the art will speak for itself. But so many people want to show off.

EK: Is there anything that you want to do that the technology won't let you?

IM: Yes, of course. My dream is to turn on a light with the click of a finger, and to be able to control it just by saying 'softer' or 'brighter'. Couples always fight about light - one half of the couple wants it bright, the other wants it soft. It's the same with cold and warm.

EK: So is anyone developing voice recognition?

IM: I hope so, that would be super. A light that you could caress with your soul.