Any other business

A few years ago (I don't remember if it was just before COVID or just after), at any dinner in Paris you could be sure you'd find someone looking into moving to Arles or Marseille. The professionals and gallery people were buying flats or opening Airbnbs or boutique hotels in Arles, while the hard-up artists were drawn to cheap housing and studios in a sunny, messy place by the sea: Marseille. I used to spend some time in Provence every year in the 80s, staying at Les Baux during summer holidays in France. Arles, I knew from that time, is one of the nicest towns in the area. My acquaintance with Marseille was more limited: basically, I knew the station and the Old Port, and that was it. But both towns have undergone quite a renaissance since then, in terms both of trendiness and of contemporary art. The phenomena are, I suppose, linked. I'd been on the odd business visit, or passed through Marseille on the way to somewhere else, but I hadn't even visited the MUCEM muse...

A couple of days after seeing Hans Krása's Brundibár , at the Opéra Comique , I set off on a 10-day 'roadtrip' in the UK (which is why my article about the opera appeared so late). As usual, the trip was by car because we were travelling with Olga, the cocker, so off we drove via Calais and the Channel Tunnel. I'd already planned to visit my sister and her family in Wales, when I found out from Isaac Lythgoe that he would be showing some of his work in a group exhibition in Leeds. To be able to catch the show, I added a day to our itinerary, and by taking in Leeds, we were able to visit Chester (much improved by pedestrianisation since I was last there) on the way, and Chatsworth afterwards. The neatly-curated exhibition, called Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age , was at the Henry Moore Institute. Its aim was 'exploring how digital technologies are reshaping what sculpture can be, and how it can be used to tell stories about our past, present, ...

Three years ago, I posted about a trip to Madrid to hear Händel's Solomon  with Ann Hallenberg and Miah Persson , taking in the big local art fair, ARCO, and a big exhibition of Leonora Carrington's work, while I was there. I actually imagined, without looking for more accurate information, that the Paris exhibition, at the Musée du Luxembourg , would be the one I saw in Madrid, now travelling to France. It wasn't. This was a much smaller show. But, though I don't have an ounce of magic or spirituality or alchemy in me, I love Leonora Carrington's work - she's probably the only artist labelled 'surrealist' I like so much. So any Laura Carrington event is an important one to me, and along I went, on a hot and sunny spring day. I've nothing more to say about it, other than that, though small, it otherwise didn't disappoint. Here, I'm just posting a few of my photos, including one of a piece by Remedios Varo, and another of one by Max Ernst, wi...

Having posted some photos, with brief comments, from Art Basel Paris and Paris Internationale , I simply forgot I'd meant to add a third article about Paris's 2025 October events, this time covering any other art that had struck me since I came back from Greece. In other words, this particular post, now that I've remembered to write it, isn't limited exclusively to the fairs; it's intended to tie up loose ends. The reason I came back to Paris when I did, mid-October, was not only to catch the art fairs, but first of all, to go to a concert in Brussels, written up on my other, opera blog . We had some time to kill before the event, time enough to visit the John Baldessari exhibition at the Bozar, i.e. the very building the concert was due to take place in. It's uncanny how, when in the presence of really good art, you just know it. I liked it a lot. Back in Paris, the first fair I went to was actually neither Art Basel nor Paris Internationale, but Asia Now. Thi...