Off the Wall

Fucci is the nom de plume of Peter Bue, whose signature paintings can be found inside and outside stores, coffee haunts, and restaurants all over the Twin Cities, with the highest count in Uptown and Lyn-Lake. That painting of Pee-Wee on his cruiser outside Penn Cycle? That’s a Fucci. Woody Allen moping on the side of Specs, the glasses shop at 22nd and Hennepin? Fucci. The party scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Via’s Vintage Wear? Fucci again. And there are many more. He’s been painting around town for 15 years, but only within the past few years has he been selling paintings and murals faster than you can say Holly Golightly.

I went to see Bue last month at his studio in the Calhoun Arts Building on Lyndale and Lake. When I knocked on his door, the loud rock music that had been blasting was turned down and Bue, a forty-something guy with a long grey ponytail and a quick smile, appeared in the doorway. He waved me inside his dimly lit workspace, where a crowded jumble of paint cans dripped various shades of gray. In-progress paintings leaned seven-deep against the baseboards. There was a second-hand Victorian couch that’s been worked over by more than a few cats, and a fireplace Bue painted to look like marble. Among the finished paintings crowding the upper walls, Marlon Brando and Barbara “Jeannie” Eden smoldered and smirked down at us.

This is the think-tank where Bue plans his big murals, and where he paints small stuff, like the “off-the-rack” 4×6-footers he’s been showing lately in the 34th and Hennepin Dunn Bros. “So what’s with the ‘Fucci’?” I asked. “Well, when I was getting started with the murals, I wanted to have a name that would go with my work. It was the 80s, and both Ferrucci jeans and Gucci were real popular, so I combined the two and got Fucci.” Even if you’re not close enough to see the distinctive signature, you can tell his work by the confident, heavy brushstrokes and pop-culture subject matter. Bue definitely has a thing for movie stars, particularly from the 1950s and 60s.

He remembers watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, James Bond movies, films by the Rat Pack, and Marlon Brando’s The Wild One on TV as a teen. “Painting this stuff is how I feel young again,” Bue said. He also sticks to the pop-culture material because he likes being able to pay rent every month. “I needed to make something that was saleable, and subject matter from film and television made sense because it’s already in people’s heads. It’s stuff people like, so they buy it.” And why are most of his paintings colorless? “I paint these people in black and white because that was how I first saw them, on my black-and-white TV. Plus it gives me my own niche,” he says. “Who else do you know who’s painting murals in black-and-white?”

Typically, Bue’s work begins by taking snapshots of the film or TV moment he wishes to paint—he jogs the DVD in slow-mo until he gets the frame he wants, then takes a picture with a 35mm camera. Bue says that the great thing about taking stills out of films is that “the scene has already been set up and balanced, and the models are professional actors.” He blows up the picture at Kinko’s and has it color transparencied. He then projects this onto a large masonry board, traces the projection onto the surface, and begins painting in the details. Toward the end of the painting process, Bue stops looking at the original snapshot and focuses exclusively on the painting. “Nobody sees the original that I work from,” he said. “They only see the painting, so it needs to make sense on its own.” He then installs the Fuccified masonry board outside the store or restaurant that commissioned the work. (With some older work, Bue painted directly onto the brick or stucco.)