In France, access to culture and the arts is a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution. "The nation guarantees equal access for the child and the adult to teaching, professional training and culture", says the preamble of the 1946 constitution, which was repeated in the present, 1958 version.
It is taken for granted here that the right to culture is best ensured by the state, through generous funding and a bureaucracy that employs 22,000 people, from ticket-sellers in museums to ministerial experts. There is no debate about arts policy being defined "at arms length"; all important decisions come from the ministry in Paris. "We don't believe in partisan political intervention," Jean-Paul Ciret, a member of culture minister Catherine Tasca's cabinet insists. "But elected officials must be accountable for cultural policy."
When the right is in power, it tends to favour heritage over contemporary art, and it is stingy. Since the left-wing prime minister Lionel Jospin came to office in 1997, the culture ministry's budget has increased by 13.32 per cent, reaching Ffr16.5 bn (£1.98 bn) - nearly 1 per cent of the budget - for 2001. France now has a lower per capita income than Ireland, but this year the French ministry is spending £31.86 on culture for each of its 60.6 million citizens. By comparison, the Irish Arts Council's budget of £34 million works out to £9.19 per Irish citizen.
And, Ciret says, the real amount spent on culture in France is probably double - because the ministries of education, foreign affairs and defence fund art classes, cultural programmes abroad and army and history museums.
The French feel their emphasis on cultural policy has been vindicated. "For a very long time, most of our European neighbours - starting with les Anglo-Saxons thought it was silly to have a ministry of culture," Ciret says. "There were only two or three of them in Europe. In countries that had lived under fascism - Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal - it reminded them of dictatorship. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thought culture sprang from private initiative. But today, every one of the 15 members of the EU has a minister of culture."
France was also much criticised for subsidising "cultural industries" like publishing and film-making. "Everyone accepted direct aid to artists," Ciret continues. "But they considered that supporting culture through the businesses that produce it was not legitimate." Paris was frequently called to account by the EU commissioner for competition.
"Even five years ago, everyone thought we were wrong," Ciret says. "But the decline of the Italian cinema industry made them think twice. On September 26th, there was a culture ministers' debate in Brussels on national subsidies for cinema and television, and the ministers were unanimous in wanting to keep them."
The government's underwriting of culture is usually associated with Andre Malraux, the author and acolyte of General de Gaulle who established the country's first ministry of culture in 1959. But the tradition goes back to before the 1789 revolution.
Louis XIV established the Academie Francaise and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He held competitions for the design of royal buildings, whose architects were chosen by juries.
Ciret says his ministry's responsibility for conservation descends from the kings' stewards who maintained royal buildings.
"When Dominique Vivant-Denon founded the Louvre under the Directoire, he gave the public access to the king's collection," he adds. "Culture in France is still marked by the thinking of 1789, which said, `Let us restore to the people those things which the nobles and kings stole from them.' Monuments, objets d'art and culture are our shared property."
The French culture ministry attempts to encourage as well as preserve artistic creation. John Lalor, a 39 year-old Irish painter from Limerick, is one beneficiary. He has just held a three-month exhibition at an art gallery in Nice which was co-funded by local and national authorities. The ministry in Paris delegates power - and money - to regional departments for cultural affairs known as DRACs. And the DRAC for Corsica has now invited Lalor and two French painters to live and work in Ajaccio for two months with a Ffr30,000 (£3,600) stipend each.
"The studio system [where artists are given lodgings and grants] exists all over France and even abroad, from Brittany to Marrakesh," Lalor says. "A lot of public housing projects reserve space for artists; an artist can apply to the city and receive a subsidised studio for life." The Irish painter Michael Farrell, who died recently, lived for a time at La Ruche, an artists' colony in Paris designed by Gustave Eiffel.
Lalor says being able to view great paintings in Paris museums "gives me fat for the winter", and that the post-second World War French sociologists and philosophers - Derrida, Foucault, Barthes and Baudrillard - have been the greatest intellectual influence on contemporary artists. Public funding also helps art to flourish, Lalor believes, but it can be counterproductive. "You have people who become government junkies; they depend on it, work within it, develop in it. That's the perverse side of it."
The Mitterrand and Thatcher eras produced radically different systems of support for the arts. "In Britain, you get shown in the Tate Gallery because the Saatchis buy your work, and the Saatchis are the product of right-wing capitalism," Lalor says.
"In France, you succeed because someone with a doctorate degree recognises your work." The `someone with a doctorate degree' is likely to be an Inspecteur de la creation from the ministry of culture. The inspectors are specialists in photography, theatre, music, painting and sculpture who pass a competitive exam to join the ministry after university.
When he was elected in 1981, Francois Mitterrand named Jack Lang his minister of culture and immediately doubled the culture budget. Lang, like Malraux before him, became a model for other European culture ministers. Mitterrand's 14 years in power endowed France with pharaonic monuments including the Grande Arche de la Defense, the Grand Louvre (with I.M. Pei's glass pyramid), the Francois Mitterrand library and the Bastille opera house.
A plethora of cultural departments, funds and centres - called DRAC, FRAC, CAC, DAC, CRAC, CREPAC - are another Mitterrand legacy. Yet despite the French affection for acronyms, the structure of the culture ministry is simple. It is divided into six departments: archives; books and reading; architecture and heritage; museums; music, dance, theatre and performing arts and visual arts. Mixed government and artists' commissions judge applications for state-funded works. Some tasks are contracted to outside professionals, for example the promotion of French films abroad.
The ministry provides 100 per cent funding for the national opera and library, five national theatres, 33 museums and 100 monuments. A second strata of regional theatres, dance troupes, libraries and orchestras receive 50 percent of their funds from Paris, and a multitude of local institutions throughout France receive 30 per cent or less. "There's a debate about whether we need to simplify or reduce all these institutional strata," Ciret admits. "But it's always easier to add new programmes than to get rid of them, so we tend not to touch anything. That's what gives people the impression it's very complex."
