It’s the last days and last week of your Summer art history school teaching. The final visit is to the Barbican to see, and evaluate, some Contemporary Art in the shape of Ragnar Kjartansson’s current retrospective there.

At the entrance you are trying to sort out the group booking when you spy a couple of other art writers, (0ne is also an editor or a well-known journal) who are just leaving. They look at you, just for a moment as if there might be some sense of territorial value at stake, but you make it clear you are not here to conduct a review, and therefore perhaps tread on their professional toes, but only to support your students in their studies.

Nevertheless, by the time you’ve seen the show, discussed it with your students, mulled it over on the bus going home, and described it to your partner, it seems…