Duncan Macmillan: Young artists take places alongside the old guard

THERE are a lot of venues in this year’s Art Festival programme.

Some new, some old, they range from the SNGMA with Picasso and Modern British Art, the Fruitmarket with Dieter Roth, the City Art Centre with Leslie Hunter through private galleries, Ian Hamilton Finlay at the Ingleby Gallery, John Bellany at the Open Eye, and a whole raft of new and pop-up galleries. It all promises variety.

The artists include quite a lot you might actually want to see. Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscapes 1880-1910 at the RSA is the most promising big show, but Catherine the Great at the National Museum promises a fair amount of Imperial glitz.

The centenary of Dovecot Studios sounds promising too, though the press release offers an odd line-up: David Hockney, Paul Gauguin, Eduardo Paolozzi and Clare Barclay. All tastes catered for, perhaps.

There are lots of young artists too, but one thing that is striking about the press release is it reveals a determined – and admirable – attempt to get away from the dreadful phrase “emerging artists” to describe them.

• Duncan Macmillan is an art critic for The Scotsman