Madrid, February 2023: ARCO and Leonora Carrington
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...