Leuchte!

It is a classic of German design history – the Wilhelm Wagenfeld table lamp, known worldwide as the Bauhaus lamp. With its clear formal language reduced to the essentials, it is still an epitome of good design today. The exhibition at the Weserburg shows the design icon in an unusual light. Since 1995, 25 nationally and internationally renowned artists have been invited to artistically rework the luminaire. The result is a surprising variety of new works. They range from appreciative responses to ironic commentaries to grotesque alienations. The changing relationship between design and art, between functionality and aesthetics is illuminated anew in a double sense of the word.

Richard Hamilton shows the Bauhaus lamp in a modernist nude painting. In the glistening light, the shape of the design object seems to literally dissolve. The artist alludes to the Holy Annunciation and en passant transfers the religious-transcendental theme into an everyday arrangement. The lamp becomes a symbol of the sacred in a grotesque way. Aldo Mondino drapes two glass hoods with a wreath of BIC ballpoint pens and calls his humorous alienation “Jugend-stilo” (youth style). Rolf Julius, on the other hand, transforms the glass hood with a loudspeaker into a resonating body that adds spherical sounds to the light. Other artists concentrate more on the function as a luminous body. Susanne Windelen, for example, envelops the lamp in fluorescent paint, which makes it remote and unapproachable from everyday life. In this form, it does not bring light into the darkness, but shines as an independent sculpture.

A special highlight of the exhibition is the work of Dieter Roth. When Walter Schnepel brought the Swiss artist a copy of the Bauhaus lamp in 1995, the latter respectfully held back. He didn’t want to artistically rework the design classic: “You can’t make them any better … but you can always use a lamp.” A year later, the collector was surprised to then see the lamp again as part of the famous BAR No. 1 (1983-1997). A black peaked cap, such as the artist himself liked to wear, has since rested cheekily on the glass hood. With enigmatic wit, he has converted the lamp into a hat stand and, on top of that, doused it with red paint like a trail of blood.

The artists do not show themselves affirmatively and reverentially, but assert their artistic originality self-confidently. They react to the uniformity of the serial product with individualization, they counter the duplication with singularization. In this way, they give the familiar a new presence and visibility. They are not concerned with alternative solutions for form and function. They cancel out the timeless and static nature of the design object. The luminaire, which has solidified into a classic, thus becomes a crystallization point for new artistic ideas and aesthetics. The artist Ben Vautier laconically remarks: “No art without light”.
A cooperation with the Maria und Walter Schnepel Kulturstiftung and the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Stiftung. The exhibition is made possible with generous support from the Museumsfreunde Weserburg, the Bremer Landesbank, and TECNOLUMEN. Since 1980, the Bremen-based company TECNOLUMEN has produced the only authorized reedition of the Wilhelm Wagenfeld table lamp.