Fabiola: An Investigation

New York: Dia Art Foundation; distributed by Yale University Press. Near Fine. 2008. First Edition. Hardcover. (quarter black cloth and paper-covered pictorial boards; no dust jacket, as issued) [a brand-new book, flawless except for a very slight bump to the upper right corner of the front cover; had been in original publisher's shrinkwrap until unwrapped for cataloguing purposes]. (B&W and color art reproductions) Book examining "the Fabiola project and its implications in a wider cultural context," issued in conjunction with an exhibition that was first presented in New York by Dia, and subsequently traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Included with the book is the gallery program booklet for the LACMA installation, which describes the exhibition, consisting of hundreds of reproductions of a lost 1885 painting of the 4th-century Roman Saint Fabiola (revered as the protector of abused women and also regarded as the patron saint of nurses) by French artist Jean-Jacques Henner, as follows: "Although many thousands of mechanically reproduced images of this young woman exist, every object included here has been made by hand [and] the spectrum of mediums is immediately striking: oil paint, gouache, embroidery, enamel, plaster, ceramic, and, in one particularly memorable instance, seeds and beans." The project was initiated by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs in the early 1990s, shortly after he moved to Mexico City; he began to build an art collection by combing the city’s flea markets and antique and junk shops, where he surprisingly found numerous iterations of the Henner portrait, which depicts Fabiola in left-facing profile wearing a red headscarf. What began as a casual collecting project grew into something of an obsession, as he and his friends discovered and gathered new images of the saint during their travels. .