Any other business

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...

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...