Byzantium at the RA. Having exhausted myself on Friday evening I could have been in a more receptive state. Low lighting levels: necessary of course for works on paper but surely not for stone carving or metal work? As for the mdf arches... Was all this someone's idea of making an RA exhibition into a Byzantine experience? I was immediately attracted to a big mosaic, a pastoral view of the seasons, and to small sculptures of shepherds carrying sheep. The Antioch Chalice, aka. the Holy Grail seemed badly displayed at a low level since you had to kneel down to see the beautiful metalwork of grape vines and people. Or was it the aim to make people kneel down in front of it?!

I must admit I didn't read the explanations in each room, so I was left wondering why one of the oldest icons was in the last room: extraordinary because it seemed to follow artistically from those amazing late-Egyptian tomb paintings in encaustic which seem to prefigure 19th century portraits. There was one, probably from the British Museum, at the other end of the show in room three. The icon, as I remember, was 6th century, and looked quite portrait-like, even having directional lighting (from the left) and was also painted in encaustic. It seemed to have so much more life than the later, grander icons, which looked more like corporate advertising: the corporation in question being the Church. Micro-mosaic was new to me, the tesserae being smaller than 1mm in size; so small you hardly even notice them. Some great books, serious physical things that put paperbacks to shame, and some marvellous free painting in them. Some lovely unpretentious everyday pottery with strange paintings of birds and fish. The crowning weirdness of the show: the very last piece you see is a breathtaking painting of people being attacked by a posse of black demons with lassos as they climb the ladder to heaven; you can almost see them sweating, heart in mouth, as they see a demon out of the corner of the eye and remember being angry with someone years ago... and then you walk straight out into the bright lights of the RA shop. Still wondering what that was intended to mean.

& Sunday morning, a quick look around Tate Modern. Rothko never greatly appealed to me, but the big room of big Rothkos was interesting because there were a lot of people in it, and most of them didn't seem interested in the paintings: it was a congenial place to sit and chat. So Rothko as a background to Sunday-morning conversation? Somehow the paintings made the people look more interesting than usual. But as for paintings, I'd just walked through the 80s and 90s of Paludino, Clemente, Cucchi, Schnabel, Basquiat and a few others and really enjoyed all that painterly excitement and weirdness. Rather that than Rothko any day. Then on into the Cildo Meireles show, which was excitement on a non-painterly level. The amazing huge maze, walking on cracked uneven glass around barriers, including barbed wire and shower curtains, barriers you can see but not walk through, to get to a huge ball of clear plastic in the centre... Dangerous and wonderful. & wonderful that kids were exploring it without nanny worrying that they might fall on the uneven glass floor and impale themselves on the barbed wire. And next to it the huge pit of shiny copper coins, and you look up at the strange curves of the roof above it and discover the curves are bones. Bones, and money. Looking through the exhibition booklet I now discover that I only saw half of the exhibition, and thought I'd seen it all, so I have to go back.