Fabiola by Francis Alÿs
I love this- Fabiola by Francis Alÿs, which is currently on show at the National Portrait gallery in London. It consists of 300 portraits of the same woman, hung side by side in two deep green rooms. The subject is Saint Fabiola, a 4th century woman who was married to a man so abusive she asked for a divorce. Thereafter she devoted her life and her wealth to the sick, building a hospital in Rome and waiting on the patients herself. She also gave large amounts of cash to the church. Jean Jacques Henner painted an idealized profile of her in 1885 (she died around 399). The painting was lost in 1912, and now Alÿs has gone around flea-markets, junk stores and private collections buying up copies of the image. Reviewing the work when it was on display at LACMA, Christopher Knight of the LA Times wrote;
Here’s the weird part: “Francis Alÿs: Fabiola” is an analog exploration of digital experience. In analog culture, data is measured by physical variables, which is what a viewer catalogs in the presence of all these handmade Fabiolas hanging on the walls. In digital culture, by contrast, data is electronic, represented by notations of numerical digits; every digital image is a mutable copy with no fixed original. That’s also what a viewer sees here. These two cultures coexist in Alÿs’ surprising work, and the low-key collision is wonderfully destabilizing.
Technology hovers in the show’s ether like the ghost in the machine. After the era of European colonial expansion, the 19th century Catholic church seized on a new technology to extend and consolidate its message globally. Chromolithography, a chemical process developed in Germany and France for replicating paintings in large numbers of colorful prints, multiplied the power of painting that the church of Rome had long employed.
July 12th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Is “beautification” an intentional, jocular, typo?
July 13th, 2009 at 1:04 am
yes, but it’s also a bit crap, so i took it out that sentence. Thanks Gary
July 13th, 2009 at 2:34 am
When did art stop being about making stuff and start being about describing zero effort work as pretentiously as possible? “An analog exploration of digital experience” is the one phrase you are guaranteed to read in every first-year Time Based Media paper at any sufficiently crap art school.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Well, that isn’t the artist describing the work, it’s the art critic of the LA Times. If the artist had made all the copies herself, the end product would be pointless.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:35 am
[...] 01:30:59 μμ on Ιουλίου 13, 2009 | # | 0 Tags:Art Fabiola by Francis Alÿs [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am
..Hatred in the form of anti Catholicism is on display here. There is no link between beatification and money. If Mr. Cooper can document otherwise, he should. This is an example of elitist media double standards. Mr. Cooper would not have the cajones to suggest that the holocaust has a financial angle though innumerable lawsuits argue otherwise. As it took Saint Fabiola 1,329 years to be acknowledged as a saint, a purchase seems to be a bit of a stretch. Mr. Cooper should have highlighted the display without malice.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:42 am
It was pun felipe, not a very good one it has to be said- infact I had already removed it by the time you posted your response.