Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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One notable criticism within the discipline

came from ethnologists such as the Africanist

Georges Balandier, who argued that while

Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis might be ap-

propriate to the small-scale communities he

had studied in the rainforests of Brazil—

societies with relatively little contact with the

outside world—it was entirely inappropriate

to the analysis of, for example, the substan-

tially larger and rapidly changing societies of

the African continent. The implication of this

criticism was that anthropology should resist

the temptation to idealize the exotic culture as

an isolate untouched by history and instead

attempt to understand the difficult process of

the adaptation of traditional cultures to the

modern world.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON

Further reading

Bonte, P. and Izard, M. (eds) (1992)

Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de

l’anthropologie [Dictionary of Ethnology

and Anthropology], Paris: PUF (some use-

ful entries on the history of French anthro-

pology, with detailed biographies of its

most eminent figures).

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1967) Les Structures

élémentaires de la parenté, Paris and La

Haye: Mouton & Co./Maison des Sciences

de l’Homme. Translated J.H.Bell, J.R.von

Sturmer and R.Needham (1969) The El-

ementary Structures of Kinship, Boston:

Beacon Press.

——(1955) Tristes tropiques, Paris: Plon.

Translated J. and D.Weightman (1984)

Tristes tropiques, Harmondsworth: Pen-

guin.

——(1958) Anthropologie structurale, Paris:

Plon. Translated C.Jacobson and B.

Grundfest Schoepf (1977) Structural An-

thropology 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Mauss, M. (1950) Essai sur le don, in

Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris: PUF.

Translated W.D.Halls (1990) The Gift,

London and New York: Routledge.

Apostrophes

Television programme

A book programme, produced and presented

by Bernard Pivot, on Antenne 2 (now France

2) on Friday evening, from January 1975 to

June 1990 (724 programmes in all). This

award-winning chat show, attracting audi-

ences ranging from two to six million viewers,

was credited with a highly significant and con-

troversial influence on intellectual life (which

was much criticized by Régis Debray). An

appearance on Apostrophes could make or

break a new book: the impact on sales was

immediately visible in bookshops on Saturday

morning. Pivot’s appeal lay in his fair-minded

independence, pitching discussion at a level

accessible to a mass audience.

PAM MOORES

architecture, urban planning

and housing after 1945

French architecture was traditionally inspired

by a very strong classical tradition sustained

by the state-backed École des Beaux-Arts in

Paris, After about 1900, an alternative, mod-

ern architecture sprang up, partly on the basis

of new, industrial techniques led by reinforced

concrete. After 1914, classical styles largely

disappeared, but they were replaced by eclec-

tic treatments rather than by distinctively

modern design, despite the efforts of leading

modern architects such as Auguste Perret and

Le Corbusier. Slow French economic growth

in the 1930s contributed to this lack of clear

progress. Even after 1945, reference to the past

was implicit in many new buildings and

planned layouts. The result was often inspired

by order and symmetry, and sensitive, human

treatment sometimes suffered.

Under the Vichy regime (1940–4), archi-

tecture looked back to traditional French so-

ciety. After the Liberation, only the devastated

areas saw much new construction, and a great

Apostrophes

deal of this echoed or recreated earlier build-

ing, using what were known as ‘regionalist’

styles. Perret’s rebuilt Le Havre (1945–63),

with its geometrical plan, big axial avenues

and modular concrete buildings, was the coun-

try’s biggest and best example of modern plan-

ning and architecture until the 1960s. Its

monochrome concrete surfaces, horizontal

emphases and repetition were tolerable in

Perret’s impressive plan, but their dull and

inferior application to anonymous housing

estates across France were no substitute for a

mature competence in modern architecture.

Public buildings drew heavily on concrete-re-

lated materials and styles, and on metal com-

ponents like those developed by Jean Prouvé.

Overall, concrete elevations and their related

glazing often recalled 1930s design until the

late 1950s. The main novelty was an enhanced

gigantism, behind which lay the inspiration of

reinforced concrete.

The biggest area of divergence from this

conformity was church architecture. Follow-

ing a long tradition, church architects sought

originality and strong statements after 1945.

Especially influential was Auguste Perret’s

concrete, towered church of St-Joseph, Le

Havre, built between 1949 and 1956. Power-

ful, ribbed vaults and soaring, angular towers

gave many churches a timeless quality which

looked awkward or quaint alongside the new

housing blocks. Many of the churches now

completed had been started in the 1930s and

design adjustments were often made, espe-

cially to the interiors. Churches had little in-

fluence on the rest of contemporary architec-

ture, therefore, and became even more de-

tached as time passed. Le Corbusier’s Notre-

Dame-du-Haut, at Ronchamp (1951–5), and

the convent of La Tourette (1957–60), were

isolated masterworks by an architect who built

little secular work after the early 1950s.

An architecture of mass housing did not

develop extensively until the 1950s, when the

country made strenuous efforts to make up its

serious housing backlog, signalled by the

shacks and shanty towns around the big cit-

ies, and the crowded inner slums. Public hous-

ing was the main solution. Le Corbusier’s ex-

pensive, experimental housing blocks (unités

d’habitation) failed to multiply, but French

architects and engineers perfected industrial

methods of construction. The main guidance

here was provided by the Ministry of Recon-

struction and Urbanism, which had been given

the task of producing mass housing after the

war. The traditional concrete specialist,

Marcel Lods (1891–1978), was widely fol-

lowed, even though his work was redolent of

the 1930s. The result was a diffusion of mass

designs which (ironically) represented a tri-

umph for Le Corbusier’s post-1930 Radiant

City urban concepts, without the accompany-

ing detail and quality. French pre-eminence in

reinforced concrete since before the war, com-

bined with a lack of expertise in modern ar-

chitecture after it, produced standardized

treatments which were often tedious. The re-

sulting simple, symmetrical blocks offered lit-

tle scope to the architect and the layouts were

generally repetitive, with geometrical effects

spreading over wide areas, together with mini-

mal landscaping and few public buildings.

Most of the flats were in slabs but there were

also many towers, demonstrating French

prowess in reinforced concrete but revealing a

lack of social planning. Individual towers were

sometimes used to liven up slab estates, but

this scarcely qualified as creative architecture.

In the 1950s and 1960s much of the new sub-

urban housing was in the form of grands en-

sembles (large multi-storey housing estates)

such as the notorious Sarcelles, north of Paris.

Developed with repetitive towers and slabs,

they were laid out on geometrical lines. Hous-

ing up to 40,000 people, they created a new

urban environment which soon disturbed the

French public. Ironically, much of the inspira-

tion for this mass architecture came from the

eighteenth century, whose symmetry and ra-

tionalism were applied to popular housing by

French architects in the absence of a training

in modern design.

Similar designs were built in the French

colonies of North Africa. A high-rise tradition

was lacking here, but the French architects

applied the same techniques as in France, ex-

cept that Arab forms and detailing were often

architecture, urban planning and housing after 1945

included. Climatic factors were fully consid-

ered and the blocks were grouped together to

create shade. Public buildings often acknowl-

edged local forms, with arcades, white surfaces

and, often, arched openings and loggias.

Apartments built for rich Europeans were vis-

ibly open to air and light and they had a luxu-

rious appearance, like the Liberté block of

luxury flats in Casablanca (1961). Most of the

architects, though trained in France, special-

ized in colonial work and continued into the

1960s after independence.

By the 1960s, prefabrication was highly

developed and architectural repetition became

even more pronounced. Curved and asym-

metrical layouts became more common in the

1960s, but the volume of the structures tended

to increase at the same time. Industrialized

concrete techniques were now being applied

to the building of blocks of flats on a scale

unrivalled in Europe. New public buildings

were now almost without exception in a mod-

ern style. In Paris, the UNESCO building

(1958), the exhibition hall at the Défense

(1958), and the ORTF headquarters (1963)

featured simple, efficient modernism and geo-

metrical forms in gigantic structures. These

projects emphasized the growing international

role of Paris, but they soon influenced public

buildings elsewhere in France. Urban renewal

often emphasized space, geometry and height,

with the gigantic Part-Dieu scheme in Lyon

crowned in 1974 by the awesome, cylindrical

Tour du Crédit Lyonnais. This phase of

gigantism on geometrical lines still tended to

reveal some of the deficiencies of French ar-

chitects in modern design and in the later 1960s

architectural education was reformed to make

its products more adaptable. From 1969, Presi-

dent Georges Pompidou encouraged modern

architecture through his influence on big com-

petitions such as that for the Pompidou Cen-

tre in Paris. The president especially favoured

tall towers, and by the 1970s a number of

these broke the traditional flat skyline in Paris

and the big provincial cities like Lyon.

Meanwhile, Le Corbusier at last achieved

national recognition as the guiding spirit of

French architecture in the 1960s. André

Wogensky’s Hauts-de-Seine prefecture at

Nanterre (1967) epitomized his new influence.

French economic difficulties after 1973 cre-

ated a complex context for new architecture.

Modernism, its reputation tarnished by much

of the cheap housing of the 1960s, and the tall

Paris office towers like the Tour Montparnasse

(1973), was partly replaced by cheapened ver-

sions of traditional and vernacular styles. The

conservation of historic districts under the

Malraux act of 1962 created a new interest in

the old. Popular preference for small, indi-

vidual houses was reflected on the outskirts of

growing towns and in the new towns (villes

nouvelles) planned around Paris. The École

des Beaux-Arts was reformed in 1968 in the

wake of the Paris student demonstrations. Its

new structure of eight largely independent

teaching units in Paris, with a number of pro-

vincial centres, encouraged variety and inde-

pendence in the early 1970s. However, mod-

ernism, which had only just made its mark,

did not completely disappear, and pure

postmodernism on American lines did not de-

velop in France. As in the last century, national

traditions provided the main lines of continu-

ity. Even the cheapest buildings, such as blocks

of flats and offices, moved away from brutal

repetition to smoother, asymmetrical, varied

treatments incorporating water and greenery.

Colour was given a bigger role than before

1970, though grey and white monochrome

lived on, with primary colours used in panels

or blazes. The ubiquitous grey marble floor

slab set the tone for many a new public build-

ing, not least in Carlos Ott’s new Paris opera

house (1984). Preformed concrete compo-

nents, often emphasized by the expansion gaps

between them, remained common.

Overall, French architecture absorbed the

new respect for the past which grew up in

France, as elsewhere in Europe. The Pompidou

Centre at Paris—designed by Renzo Piano and

Richard Rogers after a big international com-

petition, and completed in 1977—was blatantly

modern but its failure to create a school in

France reflected the big shift in opinion. The

‘new modern architecture’ which grew up from

around 1975 was based on ideas of tradition

architecture, urban planning and housing after 1945

and an organic relationship between site and

adjoining buildings. A human scale was

sought, and new buildings were often attached

directly to existing frontages. Steel, often com-

bined with glass in atria and canopies, was

used more often and more visibly, and rein-

forced concrete was used in a more restrained

fashion. High-quality bricks were often used

to stress artisanal traditions, as in Paul

Chemetov’s huge brick apartment house at the

Porte de Pantin (1981). Elsewhere, brick pan-

els were often set in concrete frames, empha-

sizing a human scale. The Catalan architect,

Ricardo Bofill, who built widely in Paris in

the 1970s for public clients, exaggerated this

historicism while seeking a rich social life, via

an architectural theatricality. His Espaces

d’Abraxas (1978–83), a concrete neoclassical

estate at Noisy-le-Grand, won worldwide ac-

claim for its expressionist romanticism, and

influenced many French housing architects,

though mainly in the direction of visual ef-

fects. The greatest scope was in the new towns,

where French architects had much freedom.

Best described as ‘neo-modern’, the new ap-

proach both modernized and humanized

France’s multi-storey cities, being applicable

to both old and new districts. In effect, it al-

lowed history to reinforce the French urban

habitat. However, many French architects con-

tinued to work in close association with the

state, as they had since the war, and the ob-

server could detect a degree of repetition in

schemes across the country.

Outside the city centres, in the new towns,

and in the small towns of traditional France, a

shift occurred from the early 1970s towards

the individual house and away from the block

of flats. American influence helped to ensure

that, even when built by large developers, these

received varied treatment. The decline of pub-

lic sector building between the 1970s and the

1990s produced growing numbers of these in-

dividual houses, with the architects of both

developers and private clients recreating tra-

ditional forms, often reminiscent of rural life.

Commercial buildings, which multiplied

from the later 1950s, conformed to the tradi-

tion of continuous frontages and constant

heights, together with, in many cases, tradi-

tional materials. Residential buildings made

some use of traditional materials and forms,

with mansard roofs returning to favour. The

persistence of nineteenth-century building

regulations contributed to this result and en-

couraged conservatism among architectects.

President Mitterrand’s Parisian Grands Projets

in the 1980s and the early 1990s combined

modern architecture with respect for the his-

toric Parisian environment. The eight major

projects announced in 1982 were gradually

complemented by other schemes. The styles

varied, but the neo-modern was the dominant

theme. Their scale varied from I.M.Pei’s def-

erential pyramid at the Louvre (1988) to J.O.

von Spreckelsen’s great arch at the Défense

(1989), whose grandeur was much valued.

French architecture since 1945 has wit-

nessed the persistence of a national, historic

tradition, tempered by an imported modern-

ism. From the 1970s, a return to tradition took

place, while the best features of modern archi-

tecture were retained or adapted. The result-

ing continuity allowed French architecture to

retain the best of the past while encouraging

good design. The design emphasis switched

from individual buildings to ensembles, and

by the 1980s a new urban aesthetic had

emerged, based on intimate space with a hint

of an older tradition in which people were the

masters of their cities, rather than the victims

of brutal modernity.

ANTHONY SUTCLIFFE

See also: architecture under Mitterrand; Lib-

eration and épuration

Further reading

Basdevant, D. (1971) L’Architecture française

des origines à nos jours, Paris: Hachette

(full historical survey until the 1970s).

Béhar, M. and Salama, M. (1985) Paris

nouvelle, Paris: Regirex France (review of

recent designs).

Besset, M. (1967) New French Architecture,

London: The Architectural Press (national

architecture, urban planning and housing after 1945

review of the dull French modernism of the

1960s).

Evenson, N. (1979) Paris: A Century of

Change, New Haven and London: Yale

University Press (long-run view of architec-

ture in its planning context).

Jullian, R. (1984) Histoire de l’architecture en

France de 1889 à nos jours: un siècle de

modernité, Paris: Philippe Sers (traces

French modernism back to the nineteenth

century).

Lesnikowski, W. (1990) The New French Ar-

chitecture, New York: Rizzoli (stresses va-

riety and brilliance).

Sutcliffe, A. (1993) Paris: An Architectural

History, London and New Haven: Yale

University Press (comprehensive review of

the development of architecture in Paris

between 1500 and the 1990s; largely ech-

oed by provincial architecture).

Vayssière, B. (1988) Reconstruction

déconstruction: le hard french ou

l’architecture française des trente glorieuses,

Paris: Picard (extensive review of French

mass architecture between 1945 and 1975,

stressing domination by concrete).

architecture under Mitterrand

For François Mitterrand, ‘le premier des arts’

was architecture; indeed, his personal fascina-

tion for this subject is clearly discernible in his

writing. This private ‘passion’ was to have a

very striking influence on his presidency, most

obviously in the form of what were known as

the Grands Travaux or Grands Projets

Culturels, a programme of architectural

projects in Paris which constitute one of the

most visible and durable aspects of his legacy.

Mitterrand’s Grands Travaux consisted of

a programme of about a dozen major archi-

tectural projects in Paris, three of which had

in fact been initiated under Giscard d’Estaing:

the Institute of the Arab World, the Science

Museum at La Villette and the Musée d’Orsay.

The first of these, inaugurated in 1987, is a

cultural centre whose stated objective was to

foster the understanding in France of the cul-

ture of the Arab world, defined in its broadest

sense, since more than twenty Arab countries

participated in this joint venture, in partner-

ship with the French state. The Musée d’Orsay,

also inaugurated in 1987, is a museum of art

from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth cen-

turies, created by converting the old Orsay sta-

tion which had been abandoned after the war.

The third project instigated by Giscard and

then completed under Mitterrand is the Cité

des Sciences at La Villette, inaugurated in 1986,

just days before the legislative elections that

led to the first period of political ‘cohabita-

tion’ in France. This was also an architectural

conversion, involving in this case the central

building of the new abattoir commissioned

under de Gaulle but then not completed due

to changing market conditions. It is surrounded

by a new ‘urban’ park, designed by the Franco-

Swiss architect, Bernard Tschumi; commis-

sioned under Mitterrand, it is classified sepa-

rately as another of his Grands Travaux,

though the President is said to have had very

little involvement in its conception or execu-

tion, and indeed, is rumoured to have disliked

it intensely. A third project on the same site is

the Cité de la Musique, designed by French

architect Christian de Portzamparc, in two

separate units, one housing the new

Conservatoire and rehearsal studios, and the

other containing a museum of music, a con-

cert hall and amphitheatre, a multimedia li-

brary and exhibition area. This was not inau-

gurated until January 1995, having been given

the lowest priority of all the projects, paradoxi-

cally, because of the crossparty support for it.

The music complex at La Villette was origi-

nally also to have incorporated another

project, for a new ‘popular’ opera house, but

in fact a more central site on the Place de la

Bastille was then chosen, essentially for sym-

bolic reasons. The Opéra-Bastille, designed by

the Canadian-Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott,

was inaugurated for the Bicentenary celebra-

tions in 1989, but did not open to the public

until the following year. There was intense

opposition to this project on aesthetic, finan-

cial and technical grounds, and Mitterrand,

architecture under Mitterrand

who did not like the design, nearly abandoned

it on several occasions. It has remained the

subject of much controversy surrounding its

cost, its technical qualities and its program-

ming policy, and it is undoubtedly one of the

least well received of the Grands Travaux.

Conversely, the project which is now con-

sidered as being the most successful is the one

with which Mitterrand was most closely in-

volved personally: the Grand Louvre.

Mitterrand confessed to having long been ‘ob-

sessed’ with the idea of modernizing the Lou-

vre, where the lack of space and funds pre-

vented the proper functioning of the museum;

he was determined to force the departure of

the Ministry of Finance from the Richelieu

wing of the building, in what he saw as a sym-

bolic battle between money and culture. His

appointment, without competition, of the Chi-

nese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei to take

on the project, was much attacked for its al-

legedly personalized and ‘arbitrary’ nature,

though public criticism was in fact fuelled less

by this apparent autocracy than by Pei’s ‘revo-

lutionary’ design for a glass pyramid in the

Cour Napoléon to mark the new central en-

trance. The ‘battle of the pyramid’, which was

launched by France-Soir in January 1984, did

not die down until over a year later when a

lifesize model, erected on the proposed site,

persuaded opponents that it would not be the

‘aberration’ that many had predicted. Indeed,

the pyramid has since become probably the

most admired architectural project of the

Mitterrand presidency, and has attracted

record numbers of visitors.

An offshoot of the Grand Louvre was the

construction of another new building to house

the displaced Ministry of Finance. In order to

minimize potential technical problems that

might indirectly cause delays to the Grand

Louvre project, thereby jeopardizing its com-

pletion, Mitterrand allowed Jacques Chirac as

mayor of Paris to exert a major influence over

the choice of site at Bercy, which suited his plan

to redevelop the eastern half of the city accord-

ing to his ‘Plan de l’est parisien’. Given the

intended function of the building, the architec-

tural competition was open to French architects

only, and it was won by Paul Chemetov and

Borja Huidobro, whose design was much

criticized for what was often described as its

neo-Stalinist style, which Mitterrand himself

described as being that of a motorway toll. The

Ministry finally moved into its new location

in 1989, after a bitter struggle involving

Chirac’s Finance Minister from 1986–1988,

Édouard Balladur, who was reluctant to move;

this enabled the Richelieu wing of the Louvre

to be inaugurated by 1993, year of the bicen-

tenary of the Convention’s decision to turn the

royal palace into a national museum.

The other architectural project in which

Mitterrand took a particular personal interest

was the Arche de La Défense; all the previous

presidents of the Fifth Republic had discussed

plans to build a major monument on this site,

but it was Mitterrand who made this a reality.

An international competition was won by

Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen

whose design for a huge white marble arch (or

cube as it was first called) met with almost

unanimous acclaim from specialists and

nonspecialists alike. Built on top of four main

pillars sunk underground, it had to be slightly

turned at an angle from the ‘triumphal route’

leading down to the Arc de Triomphe and the

Champs Élysées, because of existing under-

ground service networks. It was initially de-

signed to house a vast communications cen-

tre, abandoned by the Chirac government in

1986, when private investment had to be

sought to ensure the future of the building,

which is now essentially occupied as office

space. It was inaugurated during the Bicente-

nary celebrations in 1989, and the roof of the

arch was used for the G7 meeting that took

place on this occasion. Since then, the roof

has housed the Fondation des Droits de

l’Homme, officially inaugurated on 26 Au-

gust, anniversary of the Declaration of the

Rights of Man.

Mitterrand’s re-election to the presidency

in 1988 gave him the confidence to launch

another major architectural project, this time

for a vast new modern library. A limited com-

petition was held, which was won by French

architect Dominique Perrault, whose design

architecture under Mitterrand

consisted of four L-shaped glass towers facing

inwards towards each other, symbolizing open

books, round a sunken garden. The site was

once again chosen partly out of deference to

Chirac, since the Ville de Paris offered to give

the site free of charge, because it wanted to

use the new library as the central focus of a

whole new redevelopment in this area, known

as the Seine Rive-Gauche. The Bibliothèque

Nationale de France was officially inaugurated

by Mitterrand in 1994, but not opened to the

public (and then only partially) until Decem-

ber 1996, at which point Chirac decided to

extend the library’s full name by adding that

of François Mitterrand. Two other less impor-

tant projects were also planned for the second

presidency: the renovation of the Galerie de

l’Évolution in the Museum d’Histoire

Naturelle, which was completed in 1994, and

the International Conference Centre to be built

on a site on the Quai Branly, near the Eiffel

Tower. This project was the only one to fall

foul of conflicts with the Ville de Paris, and

had to be abandoned in 1993.

Besides these major projects in Paris, many

others were also carried out in the provinces,

but they were not really part of the presiden-

tial programme; they were partly funded by

the Ministry of Culture in partnership with

local authorities which, usually under the aus-

pices of ambitious mayors, emulated the cen-

tral model of cultural gestures, by initiating

the construction of major cultural projects that

would not only satisfy the increasing demand

from the electorate for cultural facilities in

their areas, but also act as vehicles for urban

development. These projects outside Paris

were instigated by the state largely to offset

criticisms by decentralizers of excessive re-

sources being concentrated into the capital,

and they enabled the defenders of the Grands

Travaux to argue that the central ‘example’

was the most effective model for irrigating the

country with cultural initiatives.

The significance of the Grands Travaux has

been extensively discussed in the press and, to a

lesser degree, in academic research. The widely

accepted presentation is that of Mitterrand as

the president-pharaon (pharaoh-president),

building monuments to his own glory, in a

revival of the old French monarchical tradition

of building in the capital, in order to establish

and enhance the personal image of the head

of state. That the president chose to leave his

most personal and controversial mark on the

Louvre, the symbolic heart of French national

culture, simply reinforced this view of

Mitterrand as a ‘megalomaniac’ with an

overriding ambition to be remembered in

history through the construction of these

prestigious monuments. Moreover, the fact

that he was able to carry out such a massive

programme of architectural projects, on a

scale unprecedented since the days of

Haussmann, was made possible, according to

this interpretation, by the almost unlimited

powers supposedly available to the president

of the Fifth Republic, who is frequently por-

trayed as ‘an elected monarch’, able to dictate

policy without having to contend with any sig-

nificant constraints.

However, this construal of the Grands

Travaux makes assumptions about the presi-

dent’s motives and the extent of his powers,

both of which can be contested. First, with

regard to his ambitions, the quest for personal

glory is in no way an accurate reflection of the

mood that initially inspired them: Mitterrand’s

greatest concern in initiating the Grands

Travaux was to leave a cultural stamp on his

presidency, and the architectural projects were

intended as prestigious ‘cultural gestures’, de-

signed to drive a much broader cultural policy,

pursued in parallel under the authority of Jack

Lang as Minister of Culture. Indeed, all the

architectural projects (except for the new Min-

istry of Finance, which was simply an offshoot

of the Grand Louvre) had a cultural function

of some sort, which was in each case conceived

as a response to a widely perceived and often

long-standing demand from the public and

from professionals in the field. It was also

Mitterrand’s ambition to use these cultural

projects to bring about an architectural revival

in the capital, enabling new talents to come

forward and express themselves in a burst of

artistic creativity. Indeed, Mitterrand had of-

ten deplored the quality of publicly funded

architecture under Mitterrand

architecture in France, and he hoped that the

Grands Travaux would play an exemplary

role in setting new architectural standards and

expectations. This would also have the effect

of focusing international architectural atten-

tion on Paris, thereby restoring the city’s sup-

posedly declining status as a cultural Mecca.

But there was a further dimension to the ar-

chitectural revival about which Mitterrand

spoke often before his election, and this was

the role it would play in humanizing ‘the city’

and making it more ‘civilized’, a notion which

he claimed was central to his idea of social-

ism. His architectural projects would therefore

also, in theory at least, be informed by a wider

concern with urban design and planning that

was, and continues to be, a major preoccupa-

tion of architects and planners alike with re-

gard to the city of Paris and its future devel-

opment. However, this ‘urban’ dimension was

in the event very considerably eclipsed by the

cultural demands, and the president was much

criticized for emphasizing the monumental

and neglecting the concerns of the suburbs,

for example with regard to the choice of sites.

It is also true that there was undoubtedly, over

the years, a certain shift in his ambitions with

regard to the Grands Travaux: the library

project was conceived and executed in a con-

text of supreme political self-confidence at the

beginning of his second period of office, which

for many marked the beginning of a decline

into the excesses and abuses of power that

branded him a nepotist, a liar and a despot.

Second, the extent to which the very com-

plex decision-making processes involving the

Grands Travaux were associated personally

with the president himself has been greatly

exaggerated. Similarly, the often crucial role

and influence of political advisers, technicians

and other professionals has been almost to-

tally ignored in the attempt to portray

Mitterrand as having behaved in the manner

of an absolute monarch. Recent research,

however, has shown that the president would

not have been able to undertake or complete

the Grands Travaux had he not been actively

supported and advised in this venture by cer-

tain informally constituted groups, who were

not simply behaving as courtiers, but who saw

in Mitterrand’s programme the opportunity

to realize their own independently elaborated

projects. For the ‘cultural community’, as rep-

resented, essentially, in the person of Jack

Lang, this meant providing the capital with

better cultural facilities. For local planners

(mainly those working from the local author-

ity agency, the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme

or APUR), it meant a chance to redevelop cer-

tain parts of the city according to their own

existing plans that would otherwise have re-

mained on the drawing board. For many in-

volved in local cultural politics, behind the

rhetoric of political opposition, the presiden-

tial projects represented a unique opportunity

to provide the local electorate with facilities

that would be paid for by the state rather than

out of local taxes. Indeed, it could even be

argued that the case of the Grands Travaux,

rather than representing the presidential ex-

pression of pure sovereign power, showed, on

the contrary, how these groups were able to

use the president’s own ambitions to pursue

their own agendas. More accurately, given the

heterogeneous nature of the different projects

in the programme, the Grands Travaux should

be seen as an example of an osmosis between

the presidential ambitions and their harness-

ing by the actors in the relevant policy area to

suit their own specific demands.

Thus, the widely accepted view of the

Grands Travaux as the expression of

Mitterrand’s monarchical ambitions and pow-

ers can be reassessed as a gross misrepresenta-

tion, and yet it is a view which will almost

certainly continue to hold sway, not only due

to the limited dissemination of academic re-

search, but also because of the ease with which

this view lends itself to caricatural representa-

tion in the media, and the appeal of this sort

of image to the public in general. Besides, it is

a view which has clearly served the political

interests of Mitterrand’s critics both on the

Right and the Left, and it is for this reason

that the Grands Travaux will continue to be a

controversial aspect of his legacy.

SUSAN COLLARD

architecture under Mitterrand

Further reading

Clément, C. (1982) Rêver chacun pour l’autre

[Dreaming for Each Other]: Paris, Fayard (a

somewhat dithyrambic collection of essays on

first-term Socialist cultural politics, Chapter

5 of which is particularly relevant ).

Collard, S. (1998) The Politics of François

Mitterrand’s Architectural Projects in Paris,

Basingstoke: Macmillan (forthcoming).

Ardant, Fanny

b. 1949, Saumur

Actor

Her career took off as the heroine of Truffaut’s

La Femme d’à côté (1981), in which she

starred with Depardieu. Truffaut’s Vivement

dimanche! (1983) was a showcase for Ardant.

She also appeared in three 1980s films by

Resnais (La Vie est un roman, L’Amour à

mort, Mélo). She once more starred alongside

Depardieu in Yves Angelo’s Le Colonel

Chabert, a 1994 literary heritage film echoing

her role in Schlöndorff’s 1984 Proust adapta-

tion, Swann in Love. Both films exemplify her

languorously romantic acting style.

PHIL POWRIE

Further reading

Ambler, J.S. (1966) The French Army in Poli-

tics 1945–1962, Ohio: Ohio State Univer-

sity Press (very good on the Algerian and

Indochinese conflicts and the rancour of the

professional military establishment).

Girardet, R. (ed.) (1964) La Crise militaire

française 1945–1962, Paris: Armand Colin

(a good study in French along similar lines

to Ambler’s, but with a slightly different

emphasis).

Aron, Jean-Paul

b. 1925, Strasbourg;

d. 1988, Paris

Philosopher and historical

anthropologist

Aron worked across various disciplines, in-

cluding philosophy, history, sociology and

epistemology. His principal works are: Essais

d’epistémologie biologique, Anthropologie du

consent français (which he co-authored), The

Art of Eating in France (Le Mangeur du XIXe

siècle), La Bourgeoisie, le sexe et l’honneur,

and (with Roger Kempf) Le Pénis et la

démoralisation de l’Occident, a stunning

exposé of the bourgeois discourse of morality

in post-revolutionary France (1820–50). In

Les Modernes (The Moderns), a series of witty

and highly scathing attacks on the major in-

tellectual figures of postwar France (Sartre,

Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, etc.), he decried

the power and influence of the French media

and teaching institutions. Aron (who was

based at the École des Hautes Études en Sci-

ences Sociales in Paris) achieved national fame

in 1987 when, in a highly publicized interview

for the Nouvel Observateur entitled ‘Mon

Sida’ (My AIDS), he became the first celebrity

in France to declare publicly that he was HIV

positive. This act was in direct response to

Michel Foucault’s ‘shameful’ decision not to

reveal he had AIDS. Aron wrote several nov-

els and a collection of plays, producing for

television histories of medicine and inventions.

He was Raymond Aron’s nephew.

JAMES WILLIAMS