Edinburgh Art Festival - Dean Gallery

Another World: Dalí, Magritte, Miró and the Surrealists
(Dean Gallery, until 9th January 2011)

Stand-up comedians say that Edinburgh is the month that comes between July and September. The reason for this is the Festival, the sprawling splurge of art, theatre, culture and bad jokes that takes over the capital for a month.

Not all of the Fesitval is in August--the Film Festival now takes place in June; and now, the major art exhibitions are opening in mid-July.

The first hint of this year's offering was a new work by Anthony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North)--in the form of a life-sized bronze statue of a man, rising chest-high out of the pavement tarmac near the Modern Art Gallery. This is one of a series of life-size figures along the Water of Leith, the river that braids its way through the city's suburbs. They're wonderfully beautiful and effective, their archaic simplicity and earthy patina fitting neatly within their new surroundings - the light-patterned leafscapes and bowed branches overhanging the river, the reflective ripples of the stream, and the asphalt and ironwork of the paths and pavements from which they're viewed.

The main event, however, is a seminal exhibition of surrealist art at the Dean Gallery. Edinburgh has one of the world's greatest surrealist collections, thanks in large part to the generosity of Gabrielle Keiler--collector, benefactor and marmalade heiress--and this exhibition is able to present a thorough retrospective of the twentieth century's most important artistic movement. This is very much an Edinburgh exhibition--it's a measure of the stature of the Dean collection that they've been able to loan a number of pieces from London to complete the picture.

This is nothing less than a complete overview of the surrealist movement, from Dada to World War 2. We have Duchamp's fountain - or rather, one of the handful of autographed replicas that he created to replace the lost original, cheekily arranged on its back in a glass box, like a museum specimin - and, of course, Magritte's Ce nest pas un pipe.

The dance of Man Ray and Lee Miller--sexual and stylistic--teases us throughout the gallery, while the key surrealist themes of fornication, mechanization, humour and unconscious knowledge are all laid out for the casual visitor. Of course, that's not to underestimate the straightforward pulling power of big names: the exhibition boasts a large number of works by Dali and Miró, plus a mix of old favourites and unexpected surprises from Giorgio de Chirico, and a very wide selection by Max Ernst--I find his paintings a little emotionally stiff, but they're meant to be that way, communication a Germanic tension from the edge of the Nazi rise--and a wall paneled with his woodcuts is electrifying, all the more powerful for being so unexpected, so new.

The perfectly counterpoints the Dean Gallery's permanent displays of work by Edouardo Paolozzi, Edinburgh's own heir to the surrealist mantle; and while you're there, look up at the dome in the stairwell, to see an excellent, veriginous site-specific piece by Richard Wright.

This isn't just worth a visit--it's essential.