THE FRINGE has long been the home of the avant garde, the cutting edge and the shocking.
But Scotland's annual festival of the arts has lost its bite, a leading venue owner has declared - lamenting that artists are not even arrested any more.
Robert McDowell, the owner of the successful Summerhall venue - which has become of the key venues of the Fringe - has expressed surprise and regret that artists do not merit the attention of religious figures or the scrutiny of the police any more.
He made the remarks launching this summer's programme for the venue, which features a "raw and passionate" ten night appearance by Pussy Riot.
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The Russian feminist punk rock group were imprisoned in Russia after performing inside a cathedral as a protest against the church's support for Vladimir Putin, the Russian President.
Mr McDowell said he hoped the Summerhall programme would push back against what he said was a safe consensus at the festival.
In Pussy Riot: Riot Days, one of the founder of the group, Maria Alyokhina, will present a memoir of her arrest, trial and imprisonment.
Mr McDowell said: "It is interesting this year because we have managed to stage an attack on Putin, through Pussy Riot.
"I don't think Pussy Riot have ever played ten times in a row, anywhere in the world.
"The one thing I regret about Edinburgh is that the police won't arrest them."
He said the no Fringe performer had attracted the attentions of the police since the later 1970s.
The arrest of an artist in a nude suit in 1979 on the High Street had been a notable moment in the festival's history, he said, but not one often repeated.
Mr McDowell added: "It is really hard to be doing anything avant garde or meaningful in culture if Ministers do not have palpitations in the pulpits, and if the police don't turn up to make arrests.
"There are [shows] that we have done which, looked at superficially, broke laws.
"But I am actually worried that art centres, the art world, or even the Edinburgh Festivals have become a kind of a ghetto, which means as long as you do it within the confines of the ghetto then nobody is going to have an issue with that - it's just the 'arty farty' doing their stuff.
"We want to be more relevant than that, we want to have something to say."
Mr McDowell said that Summerhall, the former Royal Dick Veterinary building which he bought in 2011 for £4m, is the biggest privately owned art centre in Europe.
This year's shows include the exclusive exhibition of the art, in drawings and sketches, of the legendary film maker Orson Welles, which has involved the expertise of Mark Cousins, whose new film on the subject is released this summer.
The venue will also play host to nearly 120 shows from around the world.
"The purpose is not to be nice and entertaining, it is to be challenging," Mr McDowell added.
Summerhall's other major exhibition is called Free the Pussy!, and it is a group show of art inspired by the imprisonment of the group, curated by Tamsyn Challenger and featuring art from a series of artists including Yoko Ono.
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