Taipei, Sept. 3 (CNA) The development of French street art is the result of a 30-year process of cultivation. While the French experience serves as a good example for Taiwan, it will also take Taiwan a long time before street art blossoms, said a French cultural worker Monday.
Street art in France, which originated in the 1970s in the wake of the 1968 university students' social movement, provides an example for Taiwan to follow, but that experience can neither be duplicated nor copied because it takes time for any art form or culture to grow, said Elodie Presles, a producer at France's national street art center in Marseilles.
The French government has been playing an important role in the development of street art, supporting artists and cultural events with funds from national budgets, Presles said, adding that the government recognizes that art and culture are invaluable national assets, and compensates unemployed artists to encourage them to pursue their artistic careers.
In France there are hundreds of art festivals held in various cities every year, but "Rome wasn't built in a day. Most of them started out as an event of two to three groups and gradually expanded to 100 - 300 groups today," she said.
The national street art center in Marseilles would like to invite Taiwanese artists to perform in France in the future as the center aimed at establishing an European and a global network of street art, Presles said.
Traditionally, city streets have been considered "second-rate" performance spaces in Taiwan, said Su Yao-hua, chief executive of Taipei Artists Village (TAV).
It was the same in France in the 1970s, when street performers were not considered "real artists, " Presles said. Things changed in the 1980s though, she said, when graffiti, hip-hop, and street acrobatics were accepted by the public as genuine art forms.