Any other business

To set the ball rolling, here's quite a long quotation from the English-language version of the leaflet handed out at the entrance to Immortelle , a big new exhibition at MO.CO. in Montpellier,  subtitled 'Vitality of young French figurative painting': I might as well get it down on paper straight off, so as to avoid any misunderstandings: Immortelle (Immortal) is a combat exhibition.  The point is to affirm a simple truth in all its ramifications: painting is immortal. So it’s just as pointless to rejoice about its return, or to regret it, as it would be to ramble on about the death of literature or music. This assertion is accompanied by solidly grounded convictions. No, the ‘Retinal painting’ reviled by Marcel Duchamp has never stopped producing masterpieces. No, figurative painting is not reactionary and backward-looking. No, France is not a country outside of history – the history that Germany, the United States and the emerging countries have never left behind – wher

The original reason for this trip to Madrid at the end of February was to catch Händel's Solomon under Harry Bicket , with Ann Hallenberg singing the title role for the first time, written up on my other blog (behind the link). But it turned out that Solomon coincided with ARCO, Madrid's contemporary art fair, so after Frieze and Felix in Los Angeles , I found myself tramping round the booths again in Spain. And what a lot of booths there were, filling two huge halls. It was interesting to see so many galleries not only from Spain and Portugal, but also from Latin America, and get a feel for what's going on across the Atlantic and the Equator. But on the whole, I wasn't actually grabbed by anything in particular - I mean, there was nothing I frankly lusted after - except, predictably, Rayan Yasmineh's latest painting, on show at Mor Charpentier. The following are a few shots from the fair; the text continues after them. I don't know how many times I've been