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EXHIBITION 1010: David Tycho

EXHIBITION 1010: David Tycho was first seen on: https://www.iantangallery.com

10 Paintings for 10 Days

DAVID TYCHO Urbania Feb 20 -29, 2020

Opening Reception Thursday, Feb 20th 6 - 8 pm

Urbania #1  2020 Acrylic on canvas  40" x 30" $4,600.00

  Urbania #2  2020 Acrylic on canvas  36" x 36" $5,000.00

  Urbania #3  2020 Acrylic on canvas  36" x 36" $5,000.00

  Urbania #6  2020 Acrylic on canvas  24" x 36" $3,500.00

  Urbania #7  2020 Acrylic on canvas  30" x 24" $3,000.00

  Urbania # 8  2020 Acrylic on canvas  36" x 24" $3,500.00

  Urbania #10  2020 Acrylic on canvas  24" x 30" $3,000.00

  Urbania #12  2020 Acrylic on canvas  30" x 40" $4,600.00

  Urbania #14  2019 Acrylic on canvas  48" x 72" $12,000.00

  Urbania #15  2020 Acrylic on canvas  40" x 30" $4,600.00

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South Granville Gallery Hop: Saturday, Oct 19th, 2019

South Granville Gallery Hop: Saturday, Oct 19th, 2019 was first published on: https://www.iantangallery.com

South Granville Gallery Association invites you to GALLERY HOP across nine contemporary and historical art galleries in Vancouver’s Gallery Row.

We welcome all art enthusiasts for a special day of exhibitions, events, talks and incredible art!

This event is open to the public and free of charge.

Participating galleries: Uno Langmann Limited, Elissa Cristall Gallery, Petley Jones Gallery, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Ian Tan Gallery, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Marion Scott Gallery, Kurbatoff Gallery, and Bau-Xi Gallery.

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Welcoming Jana Rayne MacDonald

Welcoming Jana Rayne MacDonald is courtesy of: https://www.iantangallery.com/

We welcome Jana Rayne MacDonald to our gallery!

A life-long passion for painting started with lessons at age seven from a master painter Mary MacGillivray in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.  As a child Jana never went anywhere without a sketch book, drawing friends lazing in a field or climbing a tree.  In high school she would sit behind the big guy so the teacher wouldn’t see her paper was for drawing, not for taking notes.

She has constantly pursued her love of painting while balancing life with her two daughters and a second career in film as a Costume Supervisor having worked on a long list of Hollywood blockbusters. She is a graduate of St. Francis Xavier University with a bachelor's degree in Sociology which has fueled her constant curiosity in what motivates people.

Jana’s paintings are in numerous private collections and have been shown in galleries in B.C., Nova Scotia and Seattle.

Jana Rayne MacDonald lives and paints in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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Georgia Straight’s Best Private Galleries

The blog post Georgia Straight’s Best Private Galleries was first published to: Ian Tan Gallery

We are thrilled to be voted as one of Vancouver's best private art galleries!  Thank you for the honour, Vancouver!  Thank you!

https://www.straight.com/vancouver/best-private-art-gallery

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Four Different Contemporary Art Movements You Should Know About

The following blog post Four Different Contemporary Art Movements You Should Know About is available on: Ian Tan Gallery

Trying to define contemporary art isn't as difficult as you might think, once you take a look at the themes behind it and delve into the fascinating history of modern, or contemporary art.

So What Is Contemporary Art?

Art produced today is basically what can be defined as contemporary art, and that includes not just paintings but other mediums too, such as photography, sculpture, and performance and video art by contemporary artists. Of course, your definition of 'today' might be different from the next person's, meaning that the details surrounding the definition perhaps aren't as clear as they might be. The late 1960s is seen as the end of modernism or modern art, and many art experts consider contemporary art to have its beginnings at that time.

Important Artists and Movements

Contemporary art has a longer history than you might think, notwithstanding its definition of 'being of today.' There are dozens of movements and hundreds of artists that comprise its history; here we take a look at some of the most important.

Pop Art

Pop Art is often considered to be the main forerunner to contemporary art, and artists including Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol attempted to convey popular culture partly as a reaction to those movements that had gone before. Pop Art had a rebirth as neo-Pop Art in the 1980s because of the works of artists such as Jeff Koons, although the original movement lasted from the 1950s until the '70s.

Photorealism

Gerhard Richter and Chuck Close were two of the best-known names in this art movement, which focused on the creation of incredibly realistic drawings and paintings - so realistic they looked like a photograph. In fact, the photorealists were better able to reproduce landscapes and portraits by working directly from photographs.

Conceptualism

This largely experimental movement surfaced in the 1960s and was influenced to a large extent by Pop Art. The campaign attempted to have art seen as more of an idea than a commodity and suggested that the most important aspect of a work of art was the idea behind it. Conceptualism has remained popular ever since the 1960s. Jenny Holzer, Ai Wei Wei, and Damien Hirst are some of the most well known contemporary artists embracing the ideas of Conceptualism.

Minimalism

Another movement which is still going strong today and had its roots in the 1960s, Minimalism challenges anyone looking at art to see it differently, in that rather than trying to figure out what something means, they respond to what they see. The movement is known for its general and simple aesthetic and has been described as challenging the existing structures for making, analyzing and viewing art. Some of the better known minimalist artists around today include Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, and Donald Judd.

Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver

Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver 2342 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G3 [phone] http://iantangallery.com

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How Contemporary Artists Are Redefining Art

The blog post How Contemporary Artists Are Redefining Art was first seen on: https://www.iantangallery.com

While it's easy to define classical Greek sculptures or ancient Egyptian relics as works of art, it has become increasingly impossible for modern man to define what contemporary art is all about. The reason for this problem is simple and can be explained by Vincent van Gogh's revolutionary approach. It is said that the post-impressionist approach set colors forever free and in so-doing has unleashed a force of change that has been going on ever since. And this is why contemporary artists have become harder and harder to understand from the latter half of the 20th century and well into the present times. From today's contemporary art point of view, everything can be a work of art such as Andy Warhol's work on a can of soup.

Postmodernism, minimalism, abstract, and pop art are just a few of the many faces of contemporary art. And this makes everything fair game from the point of view of contemporary artists. They are free to find artistic license and inspiration from canned goods, rap music or the juvenile rantings of a young Taylor Swift. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, contemporary art is questioning reality, capitalism, and technology on a daily basis. So much so that when purists try to draw the line between what is art and what isn't--they are making a big mistake. Is this good or bad? No one can say for sure. What's so good about the rich blend of contemporary art is that everybody now gets to be part of the artwork like a woven tapestry. The questioning attitude among contemporary artists is what keeps the present generation open to any and all possibilities in the same manner that music has learned to embrace techno pop.

Contemporary Art: A Saving Grace or Liberating Force?

Are dance artists like Calvin Harris or Avicii contemporary artists, then? By all means. Like rap music, art can happen on the streets or any part of the world for that matter. Like minimalism, abstract or cubism reducing contemporary art to a few strokes or forms on the canvas, so too has contemporary art becomes less about the form and more about an ongoing discussion, criticism or interpretation for contemporary artists everywhere. Tattoos, T-shirts, and graffiti have now overtaken good old hieroglyphics and the Stonehenge as living symbols of the transformative power of art. From this point of view of contemporary art, vandalism opponents and die-hard classical art aficionados are fighting a losing battle. And while aspiring-to-be contemporary artists still need to go to school to understand the paintings, sculptures, and symphonies of the old masters, the likely harbingers of contemporary art aren't constrained to stick to tradition.

This modern phenomenon doesn't make the lives as well as the careers of contemporary artists any easier. In fact, the biggest challenge is how to achieve originality. By now, there are not many original ideas left for contemporary artists to bring forth. It's no longer true as Rudyard Kipling once declared that the east and the west should never meet. Almost every day, this law is being broken as contemporary artists around the world endeavor to develop a collaborative piece of music or any other new form of modern art such as a podcast, a YouTube video or a new dance step. Even photography itself is under attack. Emojis, memes, and origami, among others, are fast popping up in eye-opening photographs taken from a smartphone. No one is safe from all the introspection, retrospection and analysis being undertaken by contemporary artists on a large scale basis. Even the sky has ceased to become the limit for the imagination of contemporary art.

The Unknown Shape of Things to Come

As women fight for equal pay and equal rights and against other forms of discrimination, they cease being objectified and instead are starting to be seen as three-dimensional beings and a force to reckon with. No doubt, all this reflective thinking going on, thanks to contemporary art, is likewise triggering an identity crisis, depression and other forms of insecurities. Such backlash is necessary if contemporary artists are to remain true to form. Maya Lin and Richard Serra are only two among many contemporary artists who are rising up to the challenge to become an unstoppable force in the local art scene.

Vancouver Art Gallery

Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver 2342 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G3 [phone] http://iantangallery.com/

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Why Underestimating Contemporary Art is a Mistake

Why Underestimating Contemporary Art is a Mistake is republished from: Ian Tan Gallery

Most people just don't understand contemporary art, and largely, for this reason, it hasn't been regarded favorably by society. However, it can be argued that the art of today is important and relevant, as it provides a fascinating snapshot of how we live, work and play in our modern society. In fact, the ideas expressed by contemporary artists can be extremely valuable to our society. Learning new things about the world we live in and seeing things from a fresh perspective has always been important and relevant, and these three new art movements can help us to do just that.

Abstract Expressionism

Trying to convey the spontaneity in subjective emotions was what artists such as Jackson Pollock and others were trying to do when Abstract Expressionism was born, during the 1940s and '50s. This often misunderstood art movement remains one of the most relevant and important today and has become an integral part of art culture, although its early days were confined to New York. Abstract Expressionism is still an important part of how people perceive and understand each other.

Pop Art

Pop Art remains one of the most important art movements of the late 20th century. Short for popular art, the movement attempted to mirror society, especially the mass media and advances in communication. The movement undoubtedly has some diverse and interesting perspectives to offer viewers, and if you want a better idea of what Pop Art is all about, take a look at the work of Andy Warhol. Much of his work is familiar to those who don't know anything about modern art.

The Extension Of Post Modernism

Rationality and logic are actually illogical. Well, that was the concept behind the postmodern era, which adopted the opposite point of view from modernism, which advocated a rational and logical approach. Several different avenues of art attempted to address and reflect these diverse perspectives and the movement went so far as to suggest that in the world as we know it, there is no such thing as the absolute truth. No need to look any further than postmodern art if you would like to get some idea of how our rationality is being debunked by the philosophers.

We Should Respect Contemporary Artists and Art

There have been many important eras in art although we may be in the middle of the most important one at the moment. Holding up a mirror to philosophy, science, and society, in general, is important, and the new pieces of art created by the above-mentioned movements are helping to ensure that happens. Contemporary art really can offer you more than you might think, and if you feel you just don't get it or can't appreciate it, visit an exhibition and give it a chance. You will get a chance to see the beauty offered by contemporary art, and of course, you will also come away having learned a lot of useful things about society and its relationship with art. You may even find your quality of life has improved.

Art Gallery in Vancouver

Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver 2342 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G3 [phone]

from Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver - Feed https://iantangallery.com/why-underestimating-contemporary-art-is-a-mistake/

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The Death of Modern Art & The Birth of Contemporary Art

The following article The Death of Modern Art & The Birth of Contemporary Art is republished from: Ian Tan Art Gallery

Have you ever wondered if there even is a difference between modern and contemporary art? First of all, the two terms are not exchangeable. There is a difference between the two. It is based on rough date ranges given by art historians, critics, curators, and art institutions. They recognized the distinct shift which took place, marking the beginning of the contemporary age and the end of Modernism. Modern art is one which was created between the 1860's or the 1880's) and the late 1960's or 1950's. Art made thereafter like conceptual, minimalist, postmodern; feminist is considered contemporary.

There are conceptual and aesthetic differences beyond the time frames between the two phases. Art was called "modern" because it did not rely on the teachings of the art academies and did not build on what came before it. Many art historians especially art critic Clement Greenberg think that Édouard Manet must have been the first modern artist. The reason was that he broke with tradition when he didn't attempt to mimic the real world by using perspective tricks and also depicted scenes of modern life. He drew attention to the fact that his art was painting on a flat canvas and it was made by using a paint brush. A brush which sometimes left its mark on the surface of the art. This shocked audiences and critics but inspired his peers and the next several generations of artists. Each of them whether in representational or abstract works, experimented on how to draw more attention to their medium even nearly a century later to Mark Rothko. Modern art holds numerous movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Impressionism, and Abstract Expressionism to name a few.

Contemporary art means the art of the moment, but defining it more than that and its open-ended date range is challenging. This is because the task of defining art became a personal quest in the hands of contemporary artists which resulted in ever-expanding possibilities. A key difference between modern and contemporary art was the shift in focus from aesthetic beauty to the core concept of the work. Conceptual art and performance art are good examples. The final result of a work of contemporary art became less important than the process by which contemporary artists arrived there, a process which now sometimes required participation on the part of the audience. So if someone starts talking to you about modern art the next time you are at a cocktail party, you will know not to go on and on about your favorite Jeff Koons inflated dog sculpture. You now know the difference between modern and contemporary art!

Vancouver Art Galleries

Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver 2342 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G3 [phone]

  from Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver - Feed https://iantangallery.com/the-death-of-modern-art-the-birth-of-contemporary-art/

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Interpreting An Artists Contemporary Artwork

The blog post Interpreting An Artists Contemporary Artwork is courtesy of: Ian Tan Art Gallery

Is there a key to understanding art? Are there some simple steps to unpacking what an artwork means? Yes is the short answer.

I wrote an article recently for The Conversation that addressed three questions to not ask of art and four questions to ask instead. It tackled some age-old questions that are asked of art; for example, How is that art? Couldn't that be done by a four-year-old? What is it intended to be? I recommended four better questions, taken from Terry Smith, an Australian art academic.

Below is the simple three-step technique I used, which was adapted from an old procedure used by Erwin Panofsky, the art historian:

Look

See

Think

'Look and See' are focused on using your observational skills and your eyes. The third calls for some amount of thought. It requires using what is already known and creatively deducing what has been observed within the broader contexts of the artwork.

When we see anything, whether it's a billboard, a movie or an artwork, our brains execute a tremendously complicated split-second method of reading and creating meaning. We absorb an entire range of clues that structure our comprehension of any image and we're not even conscious of many of them.

Therefore, any method of understanding contemporary art involves slowing down that process, deliberately breaking down the image and avoiding the urge to jump to any conclusions immediately.

Step 1: Look

It isn't as obvious as you might think that people "look" at art. When visiting a gallery, many individuals tend only to spend a few seconds facing any artwork. In fact, some are said to move on in under two seconds.

Therefore, you should look at what's right before your eyes. Begin with the most basic: what material or medium is it -- a painting, a photograph, an object? What does it look like - Quick and rough? Neat and slick? Dirty? Shiny? Thrown together? Carefully made?

Some deliberate decisions about the work would have been made by the artists concerning the approach, style, and materials. These will directly feed into the overall meaning and feel of the artwork.

Step 2: See

Is there a difference between seeing and looking in the framework of art? Looking literally describes what is before you and seeing involves applying to mean to it. Seeing allows us to understand what is viewed as symbols and an interpretation is formed.

"Iconography" is the term used by Erwin Panofsky for the symbols in an artwork. Any image can be broken down easily into the iconography of which it is made up.

Reflect on the iconography in Guernica (1937), the epic painting of Pablo Picasso. There's the screaming horse in the center and a dismembered arm right below it. To the left, a wailing woman is holding a lifeless infant and light shade that resembles an explosion is dominating the image. Those different elements combine to yield the overall meaning of the piece, which is regarded among the most influential anti-war artworks ever created.

Visitors View Guernica by Picasso at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. Wikimedia Commons

In Marti's "It's all about Peter," the iconography is not very obvious, it is more abstracted. This indicates that it is taken from a simple, precise depiction of something. However, the melted plastic objects are normal items -- things that are probably in your home, items with which an individual would surround themselves.

Step 3: Think

The last step involves considering what has been observed, pulling together what you've learned from the two previous steps and looking at possible meanings. This interpretation process is important. It is not a science and is not about getting the "right answers" but creatively thinking about the most reasonable understandings of an artwork.

Context is the key. The larger context of the artwork will assist in making sense of what has already been observed. The information about context is typically provided in those gloomy little labels that information about the name of the artist, the title and the year. Additionally, other treasured morsels of information are often included. These include the place and the year of an artist's birth.

'It's All About Peter' Details. Photo: Jamie North.

What is the name of the artist? Do you know anything about his or her work? If so, what is it you know about them? Whatever the work, if you know something of the artist, that existing knowledge can be brought to bear.

If you have no knowledge of the artist, determine what his or her name suggests about where they could be from? Typically, text panels in galleries have the dates of the artist and his or her birthplace; these are essential clues. Naturally, a Soviet Union artist from the 1930s will have very distinct life experiences from one born in the 1960s in Spain.

When was the piece created? Do you have any knowledge about what was going on during the period, even if it is the current year? Sometimes, text panels outline where the artist works, to determine where it was created. Artists create work as a response to the world in which they're immersed daily; therefore, the "where" and "when" will provide clues as to the happenings.

It is important to access everything you know -- your knowledge of the context of the artwork could surprise you. Much of this comes from "informal learning" through media such as television, conversations and the internet.

As it relates to Marti's 'It's all about Peter,' a major key is the title. Marti is literally informing us of what the work is about - Peter. We may not know Peter; however, we get from the title that it is a type of an abstracted portrait -- consider how the artist has been hung on the wall like a painting, giving us reason to think of the institution of portraiture.

The everyday plastic items in this work -- the iconography - are a representation of "Peter," possibly things he owned, which say something regarding the colors of the objects he picks to surround himself. If the piece was an individual, what could be said about him? Complex or colorful, perhaps? We're fathoming. But we've solved that 'It's all about Peter' is essentially a personal portrait regarding the artist's association with Peter.

Hold on ...

You are probably thinking that taking these three steps each time you see an artwork will make it take years to view everything in the gallery." So here is a vital tip -- you do not have to view (or like) everything. If you are not a fan of the Old Master paintings of wealthy dead white people, do not waste your time on them. Stick to what you love and enhance your experience.

Attempting to use an hour to look at everything in a major gallery is similar to going to a multiplex cinema, sprinting from theatre to theatre, attempting to watch all 12 movies within an hour. Nothing would make sense.

I love art that nudges me to think another way about something I already thought I knew. Other individuals like eye candy better. It's all valid.

Simply give yourself a time to decelerate, to look, see and think. This will allow you to find something that truly speaks to you.

Art Galleries Vancouver

Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver 2342 Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3G3 [phone]

from Ian Tan Art Gallery Vancouver - Feed https://iantangallery.com/interpreting-an-artists-contemporary-artwork/

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7th Annual South Granville ArtWalk

7th Annual South Granville ArtWalk is available on: www.iantangallery.com

Join us in celebrating South Granville's 7th Annual ArtWalk on Saturday, June 16th, 2018 from 10 am to 5 pm.

Special Events at our gallery:

10am-5pm

Special exhibition and sale of fine contemporary wearable art by local celebrated jeweller Suzanne Nairne

  11am-12:30pm

Oil Painting demonstration: Florals with Krista Johnson

2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Acrylic Painting demonstration: Perfecting the raindrop with Jonathan Gleed

   2:30-4:30pm

Wine Tasting sponsored by Clos du Soliel, an award winning artisan winery from the Similkameen Valley.

  5pm

Door Prize Draw, TBA

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Vancouver artist Vanessa Lam wins Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series grand prize

The following article Vancouver artist Vanessa Lam wins Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series grand prize is republished from: Ian Tan Art Gallery Website

https://www.straight.com/arts/1006596/vancouver-artist-vanessa-lam-wins-bombay-artisan-series-grand-prize by Janet Smith on December 11th, 2017 at 10:52 AM

photo: JOEY ARMSTRONG

Vancouver mixed-media painter Vanessa Lam has won the grand prize for the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series in Miami.

Now in its eighth year, the series searches out emerging visual artists from across North America, bringing 16 finalists to the international art fair SCOPE Miami Beach. Exhibiting the work there gives the artists valuable global exposure.

Lam's work mixes gestural brushwork, assemblage, collage, and nontraditional painting tools to create her vivid imagery. She often uses newsprint, handwriting, and paper amid her painting, her brushed forms and colours often evoking the West Coast landscape and rain.

As part of her title, Lam will now go on to collaborate with Artsy on an immersive public art installation in New York City next spring, working with a $10,000 stipend that's part of the prize.

Held at the Villa Casa Casuarina, the glitzy fête was hosted by actress Issa Rae and featured celebrity guests like Eva Longoria, Mark Ronson, and Olivia Culpo.

Lam was chosen by a panel of judges that included Artsy Projects curator Elena Soboleva, SCOPE vice-president Daria Brit Greene, and Artisan Series international curator Andre Guichard.

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WELCOMING VANESSA LAM

WELCOMING VANESSA LAM is courtesy of: Ian Tan

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Vanessa Lam investigates the dynamics of form, space and the unconscious through collage and mixed media painting. She refers to Abstract Expressionism in her work through gesture and automatic painting. Her action-oriented process involves a balance between chance and control. Although her mark making may appear random, Vanessa loosely directs paint through the immediacy of her brushwork and use of non-traditional painting tools. This spontaneity translates into her collage process. It engages her to instinctively respond to materials for shape, texture, line and colour. At the same time, the element of juxtaposition in collage allows Vanessa to create contrast through the placement of paint and the variance of her mark making. It is the fluid movement between chance and control that attracts her to examine both disciplines.

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WELCOMING KRISTA JOHNSON

WELCOMING KRISTA JOHNSON is available on: Ian Tan Art Gallery

Krista Johnson is a Vancouver based artist. Her representational paintings allow her to explore the relationship between colour and light as it exists in the natural world. It is this constant need to seek out an abundance of nature that she continually examines in her art.

Krista graduated with a Bachelor of Communication Design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2000. She worked as a designer and illustrator until she began to focus on painting on 2015.

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Edinburgh art festival review – the dark side of Robert Burns

This article was first posted on The Guardian

Robert Burns stands tall, a white marble hero dominating the great hall of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. He holds a scroll – as if Burns used parchment for his poems – and his plaid has become a classical toga. An ideal man, or so John Flaxman’s famous statue would have it back in 1824. But now look down and find his dark double – his exact inverse – lying broken on the floor. Carved out of black marble from the same mine, all his pristine aspects turned to night, the national poet is ruined and fallen. This is Douglas Gordon’s Black Burns.

It is a shattering sight, not least because the monument is now unrecognisable. Head and body parted, Burns is a divided self. From the balcony above he looks like a fallen angel; on ground level, like mangled body parts jutting from a trench, one foot still polished like a dead soldier’s boot. So the poet is brought down to earth. The inner man is revealed as dark and flawed – literally, a fault line running through the stone defined the way the figure cracked – at the same time that the innards of a marble sculpture are exposed in all their dark and twinkling beauty. Rough jewels: both statue and poet.

Doppelgangers, doubles, divided Jekyll-and-Hyde selves – as an artist, Gordon has long been heir to his compatriots James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson. But here he has gone further and liberated Burns even as he appears to destroy him. Gordon’s tremendous anti-monument finds tragedy in the life that Flaxman’s statue altogether ignores, as if Burns had not died young and poor, a drinker and serial adulterer. And a man, moreover, once so desperate that he booked a passage to Jamaica with the aim of becoming a bookkeeper on a slave plantation, which is the subject of Graham Fagen’s four-screen installation in the gallery next door.

Three screens show Scottish classical musicians performing an exquisite setting, composed by Sally Beamish, of Burns’s The Slave’s Lament; the fourth screen shows the reggae artist Ghetto Priest singing the lyrics to a 5/4 rhythm. The merging of the two traditions is captivating, filling the air with a sorrowful beauty that unites Enlightenment Scotland with contemporary Jamaica and does not forget, in its dark undertones, that Burns might once have become involved in the very suffering that inspired the lament.

Anyone visiting the Edinburgh art festival this summer would do well to visit the SNPG straight away for Gordon and Fagen (and for the incomparable photographs of Newhaven fishwives and New Town intellectuals by those pioneering Victorians, Hill and Adamson, continuing until 1 October). But the festival is itself divided this year. It has always been hard to define, this loose confederation of museum surveys, contemporary shows and pop-up events in curious places, but 2017 has even less focus than usual.

There’s a theme of sorts in the writings of the Scottish sociologist and city planner Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), with special commissions in gardens off the High Street and a performance in which children carry the green dragon of “Profit, Private Ownership and Corporate Greed” down the Royal Mile in a spirit of gleeful mockery. A larger version of this dragon, by Neil Bromwich and Zoë Walker, sits glumly in the gothic shadows of Trinity Apse, the phrase solemnly lettered on its sides as if this was some kind of radical protest.

Further down the Mile is the newly opened venue of Gladstone Court, a former home for “fallen women” now aptly transformed with banks of shrubs and grasses into a kind of meadow for the screening of another potent lament, this time by a 19th-century Māori princess who caught leprosy from her foreign lover. Her song, or waiata, handed down through the oral tradition, forms part of an exceptionally intense soundtrack of wind, words and electronic music that unites two separate films, screening above and below a platform. One shows two Māori women dancing at dusk, on and on until twilight turns to night, locked in some final farewell. The other shows the landscape of central New Zealand, cloud-racked, gale-blown and deserted, as if all the Māori tribes were now gone. The work of Shannon Te Ao, who recently won New Zealand’s prestigious Walters prize for contemporary art, this is a mysterious piece that lingers in the mind with its doleful vision and strangely Whitmanesque lyrics.

Jupiter Artland has the most spectacular commission of the year in the grand and stunning folly designed by Pablo Bronstein (late of the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain) and built by master craftsmen in the grounds of Bonnington House outside the city. Walking through the woods, you come across a clearing in which stands the facade of what might be a gothic mansion or church, all Puginesque buttresses, arches and piercings, rising up three floors among the beech trees. This is connected to the facade of a Chinese pavilion by a long pergola lined with red and white rose bushes: a scene straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

And sure enough, on certain days a mad ballet will take place that further fuses the elements of east and west. But Bronstein’s dream is sufficiently wild as to be a wonderland in itself. Here you are, like Alice, walking between two different worlds through these peculiar perspectives, a performer in some outlandish postmodern play.

Jupiter Artland is a miniature festival in itself, with the German artist Michael Sailstorfer’s Volkswagens turned into kilns, sending out papal smoke signals into the summer sky, and an avenue of carnivalesque creations by Marco Giordano – porridge ears, salt heads, hair made of sponges, all emitting a fine mist that settles like a blessing on the passer by. Back in Edinburgh, one keenly feels the lack of an Inverleith House show, now that Paul Nesbitt’s marvellous programme – who can forget Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston et al? – has been so ruthlessly cancelled by philistines. A collection of botanical images doesn’t cut it.

But the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has an eye-opener of an exhibition in True to Life: British Realist Painting of the 1920s and 1930s. This must be one of the most forgotten chapters in art, a period of realism that includes all sorts of neglected names, from James Cowie’s poised inquiries into contemporary existence to Gilbert Spencer’s shrewd Rat Catcher and Meredith Frampton’s super-smooth but merciless portrait of a university rector, a tin of weedkiller as his telling attribute.

These are paintings from which one can deduce the time of day, the temperature, the kind of fish on the dinner table. They go very hard and direct into subject matter, from the broken love affair to the city park in autumn. But the facts always come with a stylistic jolt – realism in brusque dabs, renaissance linearity or enamelled clarity – or with a sharp twist on the past. Oddest of all is John Luke’s bizarre 1928 painting in which Judith hacks the head off Holofernes in a spotless suburban sitting room.

It’s a scene that can also be found – painted by the great Artemisia Gentileschi – in Beyond Caravaggio at the Scottish National Gallery. With six works by Caravaggio and many masterpieces by Gentileschi, De la Tour, Ribera and more, this show (first seen in London last year) is the crowning glory of art in Edinburgh right now, and on until late September.