Come on in, the soup's lovely ... Warhol's Campbell's soup tins decorate the gallery columns. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
There always comes a moment at Edinburgh when I want to see something that doesn't move. Something that doesn't try to make me laugh or entertain me. Something that doesn't make much noise. A little palate cleanser between rich, and perhaps slightly exhausting, courses of stand-up comedy and experimental theatre.
This is the time when I nip over to the National Gallery of Modern Art. The way to do this is to walk along the Water of Leith from Stockbridge - a beautiful stroll along the riverbank, real rus in urbe (and at times urbs in urbe): weirs, waterfalls, the shade of beech trees, a heron's nest, handsome bridges and a Grecian temple. After a mile you turn up at Belford Road, where the Dean Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art face each other over the street. Here is space, grass, garden, quiet and peace. This year the big show is Picasso on Paper, but I preferred to see the Richard Long retrospective.
In the centre of town there is the Andy Warhol show - you can't miss it, since the Doric columns of the Scottish Royal Academy building on the Mound have been clad in giant Campbell's soup tins. It's rather an interesting show - not just a line-up of Warhol's greatest hits. But don't forget to go to the National Gallery itself, right next door, for its sensational permanent collection that includes Titian, Raphael, Poussin...
Other shows this summer include Alex Hartley at the lovely Fruitmarket Gallery, and a little gem in doggerfisher's Nathan Coley exhibition: bone up on this Turner-nominated artist before the Turner prize show opens in Liverpool in autumn. He's in conversation at the gallery on Saturday August 11 at 4pm, too. And the international festival's contribution to visual art, Jardins Publics, has just opened - specially commissioned works scattered around the city homing in on the idea of the garden as a social, man-made (rather than natural) space.
