Verner Panton: Designer or artist ?
Verner Panton: Visionaire or experimentalist ?
Verner Panton: Dane ?
The well filled Felleshus for the Panton Design Talk
These and other questions were discussed during a lively “Panton Design Talk” held as part of the PANTON exhibition currently showing in Felleshus, Berlin.
Hosted by International Design Centre Director Cornelia Horsch the expert panel was composed of Berlin based product designer Werner Aisslinger, author and curator Mathias Remmele, designer Ralf Handschuch and Danish born / Berlin based Architect – and friend of Verner Panton – Henrik Stæhr
For us one of the most interesting aspects was the part devoted with Panton’s work methods.
Henrik Stæhr spoke from his own experience of watching Panton at work – sitting down in front of a piece of squared A4 paper with a pencil and drawing his designs in straight lines.
If he was in a good mood he might use a felt pen.
This sober, unspectacular scene obviously establishes a wonderful disharmony between the end result and the process of creation.
Similarly both Werner Aisslinger and Mathias Remmele expressed their disquiet that Panton is often portrayed as this psychedelic druggy druggy designer.
Which he wasn’t.
His classic Visiona II project for Bayer at IMM Cologne, for example, was and could only have been the result of calculated and considered work by an expert on colours, colour psychology and visual composition.
How the user reacts with it or interprets it bears, naturally, no relation to the method by which it was created.
That users react positively to Panton’s work can be seen in his popularity.
While there was general consensus among the panel that Panton’s popularity would last as it was based on the quality of his work – a further question occupied us.
During our interview with Marianne Panton ahead of the exhibition opening we asked her if she thought Verner Panton would be successful today. She thought yes, because quality work will always find producers and customers.
We still doubt he would.
Not least because we doubt that he would find a producer prepared to take up the challenge.
And so we felt a little validated by Werner Aisslinger criticism that essentially no furniture producers employ engineers these days.
Among the major producers only Vitra maintain a sizeable number of engineers – but would they invest in Verner Panton today?
Would it make commercial sense to develop the Panton Chair in today’s furniture market?
We’ll ask Rolf Fehlbaum and let you know.
Mathias Remmele gave a guided tour of the PANTON exhibition before the Panton Design Talk
The question of just how “Danish” Verner Panton is was for us best summed up by Henrik Stæhr when he stated that “Verner Panton was with heart and soul a Dane – he just didn’t behave like one”
Derided by the conservative intellectual community in Denmark, it was for all Panton’s use of colour and non-traditional materials and forms that so alienated him in is home country.
And of course that so endered him to the wider public.
We hope that the Danes understand the irony
Sadly, from our viewpoint, Pantons “design nationailty” was only briefly discussed.
Or perhaps better put was mentioned in ways that implied that everyone must know it.
But the question for us is – in how far would Italian design have evolved in the direction and with the speed that it did if Verner Panton had remained in Copenhagen and built furniture a la Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl etc…?
And finally – for all those who always wanted to know – Henrik Stæhr confirmed it: His first visit to the Panton’s house in Basel was mind blowing. Like a visit to a Panton showroom with everything that one would expect to find.
All in all the Felleshus Panton Design Talk was a highly entertaining evening that not only brought the person Verner Panton a little more into focus than is often the case but which also allowed the visitors the opportunity to consider his work a little more in context.
And for those who missed the evening, Verner Panton’s work can be viewed in the exhibition PANTON and contemporary Danish design at Felleshus Berlin until February 28.
