The Taipei City Cultural Affairs Bureau’s launch of a Van Gogh cultural tour aroused doubts, and Councilor Wu Xindai called for the integration of local art

The Taipei City Cultural Affairs Bureau launched the "Cultural Tour: Van Gogh Chapter", which selected 20 cultural sites and placed Van Gogh's paintings with the theme "Let Van Gogh lead everyone to rediscover Taipei", which aroused doubts from all walks of life. In this regard, Wu Xindai, the candidate for Taiwan's Ji Jin in the second district of Taipei City (Neihu, Nangang), pointed out that it is a pity that the Taiwanese government blindly borrows well-known foreign IPs without further integrating the works of Taiwanese senior painters such as Chen Chengbo. Wu also believes that when cities allocate public budgets to promote cultural tourism, they should not just use external popularity to create crowds, but also think about how to let foreign tourists see and remember Taipei's own history, land and cultural stories.

Wu Xindai pointed out that at the beginning of this year, the Taipei City Tourism and Communication Bureau launched a "dual exhibition area, dual IP" at the Taipei Lantern Festival, introducing Transformers and the Chinese trendy toy "Bubble Mart" respectively. At that time, she questioned what kind of Taipei the city government wanted to let foreign tourists know about by spending public funds to organize events. Now, the Cultural Affairs Bureau has once again launched the Van Gogh Day Reading Program, placing paintings in venues such as Beiyi Art Museum, Songyan, New Culture Movement Memorial Hall, Toad Mountain and Nangang Tea Mountain, but it still lacks a deep connection with local history.

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Wu Xindai believes that when the city government plans such cultural activities, the first thing it should think of is the integration with Chen Chengbo's works. Chen Chengbo is a world-class artist and an important pioneer in the history of modern Taiwanese art. His famous painting "Tsui Sunset" around 1935 vividly shows the Tamsui River, red tile settlements, chapels, port trade and the development of modern cities in northern Taiwan. His works such as "Near the Water Source" which depicts the cityscape of Taipei are truly cultural memories that grew out of this land.

Wu Xindai used the recent cross-border collaboration between a Japanese clothing brand and three paintings by Chen Chengbo as an example to prove that local classic art fully possesses cross-international cultural charm. If the city government can bring together cross-generational artists such as Chen Chengbo, Li Shiqiao, and Liao Jichun, with The Tamsui River, Dadaocheng, Beitou, Menga, Chengnan and Nangang Tea Mountains are deeply connected, so that it will not be reduced to a mere superficial effort of "pasting famous paintings to scenic spots", and it can better educate the next generation about the previous perspectives and historical trajectories of this city.

Wu Xindai said that Kaohsiung City’s successful cultural IP operations in recent years serve as a comparison, pointing out that the introduction of international IP is not unfeasible. The key lies in the ability to translate it into local stories. Kaohsiung’s yellow duck has returned to Love Bay for the first time in ten years and has become a symbol of the port area’s transformation and development in the past ten years. It has attracted more than 9 million visitors and generated more than 14 billion yuan in benefits. The “Superman” special exhibition earlier this year did not just inflate the character, but also consciously eliminated the characters. Grassroots workers such as prevention, medical care, cleaning and disaster relief were transformed into "urban supermen", and they comprehensively connected the harbor, light rail, local business districts and the Pier 2 Art Zone, creating 7.31 million people and an output value of more than 12.6 billion yuan, which concretely demonstrated the intention of turning external IP into urban stories.

Wu Xindai said that of course international IP can be introduced, but it should serve as the "entrance" that leads the public into the city, and should not put the cart before the horse and replace the local cultural identity. The purpose of introducing IP is to attract crowds of people into the city, but in the end, what remains in the hearts of citizens and tourists must be the city’s people, land, history and cultural heritage. We hope that the city government can think deeply about the nature of cultural policies and truly demonstrate Taipei’s cultural confidence.