A Study On The Origin And Development Of Art Festival

Festival culture has been full of gorgeousness in the historical course of human civilization, which can embody cultural features, ethos, aesthetic sentiment and even value orientation of a nation. Human beings’ festivals, since the date of its appearance, have been closely related to art. The existence of art elements further enriches the contents of festival culture and diversifies the forms of festival culture. With consistent advancement of human society, continuous development of social economy and continuous improvement of people’s living standard, demand for spiritual and cultural life from people also enhances day by day, and the position of art and culture activities are more important in people’s daily life. Comparing with traditional festivals, modern art festival, as an “emerging” variety of festival focusing on performing arts and visual arts, can not only satisfy people’s demand for artistic aesthetics, enhance people’s artistic appreciation level and enrich spiritual and cultural life of citizens and the public; but also promote the construction of culture and art in contemporary society and the development of cultural creative industry. Culture is the bloodline of a nation and the spiritual home to people. In the present world with increasingly fierce competition, the importance of culture soft power has become increasingly prominent in the competition of comprehensive national strength among all countries. With the rapid rise and booming development of culture industry across the globe in recent years, modern art festival, with the comprehensive characteristics of integrating art activities, entertainment, cultural tourism, and commercial trade, has played a more and more important role in strengthening national cultural soft power, including the construction of city image, the shaping of culture brand, the promotion in regional economic growth, and driving regional tourism.With the tremendous success of the reform and opening up, modern art festivals have sprung up in many domestic cities. As an important means for improving culture soft power, culture industry has been improved to national strategy and has become new economic growth point for all countries. In recent years, with the support from the Communist Party and the government in the development of culture industry, art festival in China has seen vigorous development trend and is striving to rank among leaders in culture industry. Therefore, at the time when China is striving for realizing China Dream for great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and at the time when China’s art festival is growing, a systematic, in-depth, comprehensive and multi-aspect research on modern art festival has fundamental practical significance and social value.The article, with the integration of ancient and modern times, vertical and horizontal layout and history and theory and typical cases of reprehensive art festivals at home and abroad, researches comprehensively upon modern art festival from two perspectives of “reasonable existence” and “reasonable development”. For the perspective of “reasonable existence”, in which, the importance and irreplaceability of modern art festival as a pattern of culture activity for modern people are analyzed and demonstrated from the aspects of history, social function and value, etc. Firstly, the inevitable progress and internal logic of the development of art festival are pondered over with historical thinking, and various historical origins and evolution processes of Chinese and Western art festivals are recorded with summary and historical stages. Although modern art festival, as an independent festival variety, originated from European countries initially, forms of art festival are diverse. Art festival is not an exotic from Western countries, and “Chinese art festival” has existed since ancient times in Chinese centuries-old and ancient traditional festival culture. For example, many art and culture activities of ancient temple fair, tamasha, lantern show and book club, with profound cultural connotation and distinct folklore characteristics and combining artistic performance, entertainment and trading, constituted art festivals with traditional cultural characteristics in Chinese ancient society. Secondly, through analysis on basic connotation of modern art festival and summary of major characteristics, the organic connection between art festival and the survival of human beings, urban renewal and social development is discussed to deeply analyze the diversified value function of modern art festival. For the perspective of “reasonable development”, in which, through discussing successful experiences, lessons of failure and challenges facing during the development of modern art festival, foresight thinking is conducted for future development of Chinese art festival. Firstly, with dialectical thinking, dialectical analysis of the contradiction is made on diversified capital sources, pluralistic operation patterns, industrial operation mechanism and existing problems from the perspective of consciousness of problems and on the basis of research on numerous cases of art festival, to find the root of the problems. Secondly, combining with specific cases, the development trend of modern art festival is researched from four aspects of “creating ‘great art’ in small cities and towns”, “developing art festival for promoting national classics”, “building world-renowned international brand” and “creating a national festival for all people”. Thirdly, on the basis of said theoretical research, with the application of theory in practice and innovative thinking, combining with current national conditions and local culture of China, countermeasures and suggestions with innovation, uniqueness, times and applicability are put forward for holding art festivals which embody the spirit of China and gather strength of China in the future.