The Art of the Grotesque Holiday, is profoundly bound to the history and the evolution of the urban Festival.
The current grotesque processions took shape at the end of the XIX-th century. It is interesting to underline the appearance, the same year or almost of big parades of grotesque floats, in pasteboard: it was in 1873, in Nice, Viareggio, Rio, New Orleans, that count even nowadays among the most important urban carnivals of the world.
Nowadays, the aesthetics of the grotesque festival, evolves, widens, is illuminated, is questioned. New orientations appear which correspond to other forms of conviviality, communication.
One of the most characteristic phenomena to be indicated, in this decade when the world celebrates Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of the New World, is exactly, the current influence as a boomerang effect, Brazilian carnivals, West Indian, Latin American on European Carnivals and Scandinavians, quite particularly.
Effectively, for more than a decade the " schools of samba " bloom in Scandinavia and "tropical" carnivals take place during feasts of the spring or summer in Denmark (Aalborg, Copenhagen) or Sweden (Stockholm, Norkopping).
The orchestras of steel-band and magnificent suits of Trinidad's carnival expose themselves splendidly during Notting Hill's carnival which takes place in London at the end of August, in the presence of a million persons.
The Holiday, the Carnival, such Ph œ nix which is reborn of its ashes engenders new symbols: the influence of the African, Indian, afro-Brazilian, Afro West Indian cultures, transformed the tropical carnivals, - of European import, originally.
The Holiday, the Carnival, the Music, become soaked with this admixture, this interbreeding of the cultures which has for privileged radius of action, the street, the creation of new cultural and social connections, new spaces, new forms of expression. Samba, soca, salsa and maintaining the rap replace walking and farandoles of former days.
The Arts of the street take place in the festival, and played an important role in the ceremonies which took place during the Olympic Games of Albertville and Barcelona. They inspire several carnivals in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Germany..
The carnavalier becomes an artist - plastics technician, a scenographer. Nice, which had already been the "experimental" Carnival of the end of the last century, will know, in this year of 1993, to begin its new evolution and to make a success of the inevitable meeting between Carnival and Arts of the Street? Carnival and contemporary Art?
The answer should not escape carnavaliers, holders of a popular, too much underestimated and underestimated cultural patrimony, and who should take up the challenge of the year 2000. The answer should also call more to the youth ready to get involved again, in the festival with its rhythms, its images, its new values.
