Spring Festival Essay

The Spring Festival

The experience of urban art in Mashhad

Ehsan Mahdavi

The Welcome Spring Festival of Mashhad is an event that began in 2008 with the support of Mashhad Municipality and Artists’ Forum. Self-taught and progressive, the Spring Festival moved ahead and reached its peak in 2012 and 2013. Now, urban art centered around spring is acknowledged in all the cities of Iran. The festival is called Baharestan in Tehran.

Urban art

Urban art covers a wide scope of works all over the world. Perhaps, this was the best title that could be chosen for the festival and it officially appeared in the call for works since 2012. No similar event had occurred in other countries in those years, so the self-taught urban art turned into a native tradition. One of the main features of the Spring Festival was being self-taught. This was

The excessive participation of all the artists was one of the influential factors in the advancement of the Festival. The artist trusts in an event when he/she feels that its directors are his/her type and feels that there is enough freedom of speech. According to Milton Glaser, “Art is work.” Art is valuable when it is presented as a work. The subject of the end of the semester projects of the art students in those years was the Welcome Spring Festival. They both experienced and performed their work in the city. In the meanwhile, the Spring Festival had become so pervasive that many professions had also become involved.

Presence in the city

Positioning is the most important point in urban art. Perhaps, the best solution is to precisely define the position and design for that particular place. In their works, the artists paid attention to the viewing angle, distance from the work, the time when it was viewed, its size in relation to people, passing, turning, distance, night or day time, visual density or tranquility in relation to the city.

Organizational