The Edinburgh festival is everyone's favourite arts festival. Well, it ought to be. It has everything from books to booze, from serious theatre to street entertainers. Which is another way of saying that it uniquely combines high art and popular culture. Ever since the fringe was invented, this festival has achieved a vitality that is different from other festivals, however refined and avant garde their approach may be. In short, it is fun.
Part of this is down to the fact that it happens in Edinburgh, a city with such atmospheric and dramatic vistas, such eerie and splendid architecture. This weekend I will be running from Inverleith House to Belfort Road in search of the festival's art highlights. Once again, there is an Edinburgh art festival that co-ordinates a rich variety of exhibitions.
But the best thing about the Edinburgh festival is surprise. You run around trying to see things; you can't get a ticket for the famous TV comic, so you see someone you've never heard of, who turns out to be a genius. A lot of my Edinburgh memories are like that, including a late-night show at the Gilded Balloon when we chanced on Jerry Sadowitz. It's the same with art. Once, before I was an art critic, we were at Edinburgh and wandered into the Stills Gallery. It had a compelling and entrancing exhibition of still-life photographs of raw flesh by Helen Chadwick – a magical body of work and my first encounter with this artist. Big shows by blue-chip artists can be more "official" and boring: I remember an utterly tedious exhibition of bronzes by Max Ernst at the Fruitmarket.
My most treasured Edinburgh art memory came a few years ago, when I was here to review the art festival. I was taken to the New Town to meet an artist who was working on a spiralling wall and ceiling painting that turned the interior of an elegant house into a starry cosmic field. Richard Wright came down from his scaffolding to talk about the history of perspective. A couple of years later I was on the Turner prize jury when his name came up ...
So Edinburgh has been one of the luckiest places for me to look at art. I am looking forward to more surprises this year. I'll tell you about them next week.
