{"id":93351,"date":"2025-05-30T09:48:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=93351"},"modified":"2025-06-09T09:55:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T16:55:53","slug":"button-by-button-robert-fuerer-reimagines-art-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/button-by-button-robert-fuerer-reimagines-art-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Button by Button, Robert F\u00fcerer Reimagines Art History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gallery

Installation view of Robert F\u00fcerer\u2019s \u201cWomen of Art: Button by Button\u201d at Bountiful Davis Art Center, featuring button mosaic reinterpretations of iconic paintings from art history including, from left, Klimt\u2019s \u201cAdele Bloch-Bauer,\u201d Monet\u2019s \u201cWoman with Parasol,\u201d da Vinci’s \u201cLady with an Ermine,\u201d and Botticelli\u2019s \u201cBirth of Venus.\u201d Image by Geoff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

It has happened again. In the immediate aftermath of my breakthrough in understanding an artist whose labors in two separate artistic gardens had puzzled me for years (see here<\/a>), another artist has brought forth a similarly converse second body of art. Robert F\u00fcerer is a seasoned world traveler, a fragment of whose lifetime self-portrait appeared here<\/a> upon his recent return. Once again, the subject matter couldn\u2019t be more different from his previous outing; not just different, mind you, but mutually self-exclusive. And the technical approaches couldn\u2019t be less alike if he\u2019d switched from painting in oils to collaging with tailor\u2019s buttons … which, as it happens, is precisely what he\u2019s done.<\/h4>\n

The eight non-paintings making up Women of Art: Button by Button<\/em>, in the Front Gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center, literally re-present not only some of the most popular paintings in art, but pivotal moments in its history as well. For instance, it\u2019s generally agreed that one of the primary purposes of Sandro Botticelli\u2019s masterpiece of 1484-86, \u201cThe Birth of Venus,\u201d was to personify the Renaissance rebirth of the Classical Age and its consummate literary form: Mythology. So it\u2019s appropriate that F\u00fcerer begins his own rebirth of art with \u201cBirth of Buttons.\u201d By layering hundreds of pierced discs drawn from the history of apparel, made of materials that run the gamut from the mere practical to the elaborately ornamental, sometimes as many as five deep to produce details and lively effects, he\u2019s made copies of instantly recognizable artworks that enable him to control just how they evoke our memories of the originals.<\/h4>\n
\"Button

Robert F\u00fcerer, \u201cLady with a Buttoned Ermine,\u201d a button mosaic recreation of Leonardo\u2019s famous portrait, transforming classical oil painting into textured, playful collage.<\/p><\/div>\n

While Botticelli was crowning the two primary media of their day\u2014buon fresco<\/em> and egg tempera\u2014Leonardo was transforming the characteristics of oil into the perfect medium to represent flesh. His \u201cLady With an Ermine,\u201d which he finished around 1491, was one of a series of women\u2019s portraits that climaxed with \u201cMona Lisa,\u201d which was not finished until F\u00fcerer came along to button it up.<\/h4>\n

From \u201cLady With a Buttoned Ermine,\u201d F\u00fcerer vaults to Modernism, in 1871, with the painting known colloquially as \u201cWhistler\u2019s Mother.\u201d That it\u2019s the tiniest painting here doesn\u2019t stop the artist from claiming she is actually sewing on a button while posing on her familiar rocker, but it does make for a remarkable effect when her famous image suddenly flashes forth, visible for an instant, from the tiny cluster of buttons.<\/h4>\n

The hits came fast in those years: Claude Monet\u2019s 1875 \u201cMadame Monet and her Son,\u201d also known as \u201cThe Stroll,\u201d now becomes \u201cButton Parasol,\u201d while Paul Gauguin\u2019s once-scandalous \u201cWoman With a Flower\u201d of 1891 becomes \u201cTahitian Woman with a Flower\u201d today.<\/h4>\n

Two opposing, yet still modern approaches to figure painting appeared at the same time in 1907. Gustav Klimt keeps his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer straight while embedding her in a background he based on the Byzantine ornaments of Ravenna\u2019s Basilica of San Vitale. In what may be the most readily legible reproduction here, F\u00fcerer captures the original\u2019s hallucinatory optics with buttons instead of mosaic tiles. Then, in what may be more difficult to see because of its roots in the invention of Cubism, Picasso\u2019s \u201cYoung Ladies of Avignon\u201d challenges readings of \u201cButtoned Demoiselles.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"Button

Robert F\u00fcerer, \u201cFrida and Monkey,\u201d a button mosaic reinterpretation of Frida Kahlo\u2019s self-portrait, layered within a brightly painted, folk-art-style wooden frame.<\/p><\/div>\n

Frida Kahlo populated her garden home with monkeys, which she painted to show their intelligence and sympathetic characters. She may have kept them to compensate for her inability to bear children, while her self-portraits with monkeys, like this one from 1938, were frequently commissioned by her friends.<\/h4>\n

F\u00fcerer recalls using buttons as tiles in portrait mosaics beginning in 2008, with one he called \u201cMosaic Mona.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to guess the subject, nor is it surprising that the idea came to him while contemplating his grandmother\u2019s button collection. Progress followed over the next 16 years, leading to the present eight images done in 2024. One particularly sweet touch involves the frames; while not necessarily authentic to a specific period, each seems to invoke the academic or decorative quality of traditional art. While the resemblance between the button versions and the originals may at first seem questionable, comparing them soon proves otherwise. Details like Monet\u2019s wife\u2019s shadow coming down the hill between her and her son\u2014who might easily be overlooked\u2014may not have been noticed in the original, but become permanent parts of the memory of the painting afterwards.<\/h4>\n

And perhaps the most meaningful, even useful lesson here has to do with pareidolia, a cerebral-optical effect that has recently migrated from an obscure fringe of scientific lore to become as central to understanding how reality works as knowing that objects in space are not really weightless. It seems our brains work like independent scientists, constantly seeking out patterns of information in the sensory noise in which we operate. Don\u2019t be surprised, as your eyes graze over the plethora of buttons, to suddenly catch a pair of eyes or a complete face looking back from the edge of your vision, only to disappear when looked for directly. There\u2019s a lesson here about not believing all the things we think we see. And in what could very easily, and not unreasonably, be taken for a stunt or an elaborate joke\u2014the humor is certainly here\u2014 Robert F\u00fcerer has found a playful way to activate the museum pieces of art history and restore some of their relevance in yet another pivotal hour.<\/h4>\n
\"Button

Robert F\u00fcerer, \u201cButtoned Demoiselles,\u201d a button mosaic translation of Picasso\u2019s groundbreaking cubist painting, reimagining angular forms through layered buttons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Women of Art: Button by Button<\/em>, Bountiful Davis Art Center<\/a>, Bountiful, through August 15.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has happened again. In the immediate aftermath of my breakthrough in understanding an artist whose labors in two separate artistic gardens had puzzled me for years (see here), another artist has brought forth a similarly converse second body of art. Robert F\u00fcerer is a seasoned world traveler, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":93352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[2504,4665],"class_list":["post-93351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-bountiful-davis-art-center","tag-robert-fuerer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Buttoned-Demoiselles.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-07 13:47:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93464,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93351\/revisions\/93464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}