Francis Alÿs, “Fabiola”

Installation view

Courtesy the DIA Art Foundation

Helen of Troy may have had the face that launched a thousand ships, but she’s got nothing on Saint Fabiola, a Roman divorcée turned do-gooder whose mug—or at least a single depiction of it—has inspired countless Sunday painters around the world for more than a century. Artist Francis Alÿs, who first noticed the somber, red-cloaked matron amidst the poker-playing dogs and velvet Elvises in flea markets some 20 years ago, has made a pastime of searching for portraits of her, all copies of a long-lost 1885 original by the French painter Jean-Jacques Henner. What better way for the globe-trotting artist to fill idle hours than by haunting the junk stores and street fairs of Mexico City, Milan and Maastricht?

Adding his own twist to the recent spate of artist-curated exhibitions, Alÿs worked with the Dia Art Foundation to install his entire fleet of Fabiolas—nearly 300 strong and growing—at the Hispanic Society. The institutional match-up, the first in a new three-year collaboration, is a nimble sidestep for the Dia, allowing it to keep a toehold in Manhattan while searching for a new home. Yet it’s hard to imagine this effective little show working quite so well anywhere else. With their terra-cotta tile floors, mahogany walls and inset glass cases filled with artifacts from the permanent collection, the Hispanic Society’s intimate beaux arts galleries are a stately foil for the paintings, emphasizing contemplation over kitsch—an effect which surely would have been reversed had the art been shown in a white-box space.

In any case, Alÿs—a Belgium-born, Mexico City–based architect-turned-artist—almost always makes or takes his work off of contemporary art’s well-trodden paths. His flair for transforming humble acts into broadly resonant gestures can result in terrifically powerful works, as in his video Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic (2005), shown at David Zwirner Gallery last winter. In it, the artist can be seen toting a leaking can of green paint on a long trek along the so-called “Green Line” (the armistice boundary from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence), highlighting trenchant historical and social divisions with casual aplomb.

Here, the attraction for Alÿs seems to be Fabiola’s juicy backstory, which is certainly worthy of a contemporary fabulist’s attention. A minor Italian saint from the 5th century, she was brought out of the catacombs of obscurity when a 19th-century British cardinal fictionalized her life (abuse, divorce, repentance—pretty much the stuff of a Lifetime movie) as an extremely popular historical melodrama. In 1885—in what could be described as “You’ve read the book, now see the painting”—Henner memorialized her in a gauzy profile portrait, which disappeared a few years later, though not before inspiring a host of amateur reproductions. Her underground popularity endured, likely aided by the fact that she is the patron saint of difficult marriages, cuckolds and abuse victims, thus making her a natural icon for struggling souls in troubled times.

Accordingly, “Fabiola” finds Alÿs working in a meditative, almost anthropological vein, trying to tease out how this particular cult of image came to be, and what it reveals about human nature and the act of devotion. The salon-style hanging underscores the similarities shared by the images while highlighting the inherently obsessive nature of collecting art. But it’s the differences between all the likenesses—reflecting the varying degree of talent and styles among the individual artists—that really paint a picture of Fabiola’s appeal. In that respect, the show is also a gentle reminder that art doesn’t necessarily have to be in good taste to be good. Because some of these paintings are, in fact, pretty bad. A few truly novel renditions deserve mention, including one Fabiola made entirely of seeds and red beans, another in which her face fades into a washy modernist cityscape, and yes, one painting on black velvet. Many are dinged up, with the sorts of scrapes, dents and stains that come from years spent moldering in thrift stores or hanging in someone’s smoky parlor. But that’s exactly the point—they are bits of cultural flotsam, once loved, now discarded, surfaced and sorted—and for every one that Alÿs has nabbed, there are thousands of others out in the world. Remarkably enough, the more Fabiolas there are, the more mysterious and transcendent she becomes.