PREVIEW: Edinburgh Art Festival

_{Peter Doig, 'Cricket Painting (Paragrand)', 2006-2012.} Not long ago, the visually aware among us could travel to the Edinburgh Festival knowing that – for one city break at least – art exhibitions could be forsaken for the pleasures of a pint and a stand-up or sketch show. But over the last decade a visual art festival has sprung up and slowly built momentum, to the point where any art-loving visitor to Edinburgh now has top-quality shows on offer as a viable alternative to an afternoon at the Fringe.

The tenth edition of the Edinburgh Art Festival officially opens today, and the stand-out painting show is a solo presentation of Scottish-born Trinidad-based artist Peter Doig at the Scottish National Gallery (for more on the painter, read Sarah Greenberg’s interview with Doig in the last issue of RA Magazine). The Scottish National Portrait Gallery presents a show that was at its London equivalent earlier this year, ‘Man Ray Portraits’, and although the Philadelphian-in-Paris’s portraits were not quite as consistently inventive as some of his other works, his pre-war pieces in the genre are especially interesting to see.

_{Franz West, 'Platonischer Mond', 2002. C-Type-Print; 30 x 43 cm; Rahmen: 34 x 47 cm.}

The Fruitmarket Gallery is always worthwhile to visit for those keen on contemporary art, and for the festival it presents a survey of Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, whose geometric motifs spread across paintings, sculptures and photographs. The pioneer of video art, Korean-American artist Nam June Paik, has been the subject of a resurgence of interest lately across the globe – Talbot Rice Gallery shows the first ever exhibition of his work in Scotland. And the late Franz West, famed for participatory and witty sculptural works, is the focus at Inverleith House, which highlights the Austrian artist’s collaborations with other practitioners, from Scottish photographer and video artist Douglas Gordon to Italian Arte Povera great Michelangelo Pistoletto.

_{Nam June Paik, 'Memorabilia'. Nam June Paik’s New York Broome St. Studio reconstructed in the Nam June Paik Art Center. Courtesy of the Nam June Paik Art Center.}

But if none of these shows can drag you away from the fringe, then let the art come to you in the form of art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon’s show at The Space, ‘Castration on a Tennis Court, and Other Stories: The Life and Art of Michelangelo Merisi, alias Caravaggio’. The Baroque artist with a famously colourful biography is an inspired subject for a stand-up-cum-art-historical-lecture by the BBC presenter.

• The Edinburgh Art Festival runs across various locations from 1 August - 1 September 2013.

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and Acting Editor of RA Magazine

• Royal Academy of Arts