The Edinburgh Art Festival is an annual visual arts festival, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, during August and coincides with the Edinburgh International and Fringe festivals. The Art Festival was established in 2004, and receives public funding from Creative Scotland. [1] In 2022, Kim McAleese was appointed Festival Director, [2] succeeding Sorcha Carey (2011 - 2021). Carey is now Director at Collective, Edinburgh. [3]
The Edinburgh International Festival began in 1947, and significant visual art exhibitions were included in the early years. [4] Exhibitions included the French artists Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard in 1948; [5] a retrospective of the three Scottish Colourists, Samuel Peploe, Francis Cadell and Leslie Hunter in 1949; and Rembrandt in 1950. Thereafter, there was acknowledgement from the Festival authorities that the visual arts needed to be more "emphatically represented"[ citation needed ] in the Festival itself, and a series of partnerships was forged between the Festival Society and the then Arts Council of Great Britain, the Royal Museum of Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland, the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy.[ citation needed ] With a few exceptions, these looked beyond the art of Scotland and contributed to a declared part of the Festival’s international aims. Not only did the exhibitions bring the works of foreign artists to Scotland, they cultivated an interest in Scotland amongst wealthy collectors and patrons from around the world.[ citation needed ]
From 1966[ citation needed ], the visual arts existed outside the programme of the Edinburgh Festival, presented instead across a wide range of organisations, from the city's permanent galleries to artist-led initiatives. This left many galleries with no visible profile in August, a time when they were programming substantial exhibitions.
In 2001 a campaign by newspaper Scotland on Sunday brought together a representative group of gallery directors, and the first visual art festival was piloted in 2004. [7] [8] Between 2005 and 2007 the organisation produced a Festival Guide, commissions, and collaborative projects, to celebrate and promote the exhibitions of Edinburgh museums and galleries in August, creating a collective and united marketing platform in which to showcase their artistic programmes.
Since 2004 Edinburgh Art Festival has grown to be Scotland's largest annual visual arts festival, and comprising over 45 exhibitions across more than 30 venues. The festival has also commissioned or co-commissioned major artworks around the city by artists including Martin Creed, Callum Innes, Richard Wright and Susan Philipsz.
Following a scaled down offering in 2020 due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Edinburgh Art Festival launched a hybrid programme for summer 2021. The 2021 festival included work by Isaac Julien, Archie Brennan, Emeka Ogboh, Alberta Whittle, Sekai Machache, Christine Borland, Andrew Gannon, Karla Black and Alison Watt among others. [9] [10] Writing for the Art Newspaper, Tim Cornwell, noted that 'The Black Lives Matter movement continues to resonate strongly over this weekend's post-Covid opening of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF)'. [10]
Venues in the festival include the Royal Botanic Garden, Jupiter Artland, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and National Galleries of Scotland. [11]
Les Nabis were a group of young French artists active in Paris from 1888 until 1900, who played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and the other early movements of modernism. The members included Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, Paul Sérusier and Auguste Cazalis. Most were students at the Académie Julian in Paris in the late 1880s. The artists shared a common admiration for Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and a determination to renew the art of painting, but varied greatly in their individual styles. They believed that a work of art was not a depiction of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist. In 1900, the artists held their final exhibition and went their separate ways.
Jean-Édouard Vuillard was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, where the subjects were blended into colors and patterns. He also was a decorative artist, painting theater sets, panels for interior decoration, and designing plates and stained glass. After 1900, when the Nabis broke up, he adopted a more realistic style, painting landscapes and interiors with lavish detail and vivid colors. In the 1920s and 1930s he painted portraits of prominent figures in French industry and the arts in their familiar settings.
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis, his early work was strongly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, as well as the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists. Bonnard was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject.
The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music and the performing arts are invited to join the festival. Visual art exhibitions, talks and workshops are also hosted.
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is part of the National Galleries of Scotland, which are based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The National Gallery of Modern Art houses the collection of modern and contemporary art dating from about 1900 to the present in two buildings, Modern One and Modern Two, that face each other on Belford Road to the west of the city centre.
The year 1889 in art involved some significant events.
Richard Demarco CBE is a Scottish artist and promoter of the visual and performing arts.
Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) is an art centre in Dundee, Scotland, with two contemporary art galleries, a two-screen cinema, a print studio, a learning and public engagement programme, a shop and a café bar.
The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco.
Paul Sérusier was a French painter who was a pioneer of abstract art and an inspiration for the avant-garde Nabis movement, Synthetism and Cloisonnism.
Henri-Gabriel Ibels was a French illustrator, printmaker, painter and author.
Haleh Jamali is an Iranian artist currently living and working in Scotland. She works with a wide range of media and techniques that include painting, photography, installation, video, and performance. She completed her Bachelors of Arts in Painting at the College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, in 2005. In 2007, she received her MA in Art and Media Practice from the University of Westminster, London. Her works focus on the hidden layers beneath the visible by using the media of painting and installation.
The Seamstress is an 1893 oil painting by French artist Édouard Vuillard, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is a small, intimate image of a woman sewing.
Graham Fagen is a Scottish artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He has exhibited internationally at the Busan Biennale, South Korea (2004), the Art and Industry Biennial, New Zealand (2004), the Venice Biennale (2003) and represented Scotland at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 in a presentation curated and organised by Hospitalfield. In Britain he has exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 1999 he was invited by the Imperial War Museum, London to work as the Official War Artist for Kosovo.
Tracy Mackenna (1963) is a British sculptor and artist, creating works with her partner Edwin Janssen. She was Course Director at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.
Calum Colvin is a Scottish artist whose work combines photography, painting, and installation, and often deals with issues of Scottish identity and culture and with the history of art. He has had solo exhibitions at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and Royal Scottish Academy and has a number of works in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, Tate Galleries, and the British Council. He is also Professor of Fine Art Photography and Programme Director, Art & Media at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, part of the University of Dundee.
Andrew Cranston is a Scottish painter. His work has been reviewed and discussed in various publications such as The Guardian and The Spectator.
Bernheim-Jeune gallery is one of the oldest art galleries in Paris.
The 57 Gallery, later the New 57 Gallery, was an artist-run gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1957 until 1984.
Collective is a contemporary art centre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is situated on Calton Hill, in the former City Observatory and City Dome site. It offers a programme of exhibitions, guided walking tours, audio walking tours, and events.