But as far as real clout in today’s art world is concerned, Ropac might as well be singin’ in the rain. Hardly anybody journeys to Paris anymore specifically to see cutting-edge art. Although the French do have a contingent of high-profile contemporary artists, none of them enjoys the international prominence of, say, Britain’s Damien Hirst or Germany’s Gerhard Richter. Paris has little of New York’s naked mercantilism, London’s trendy conceit or Berlin’s punkish bitterness–not necessarily desirable civic attributes, but each apparently necessary for the creation of significant contemporary art. Indeed, to the art world, Paris over the decades has degenerated into a theme park for middle-class masterpiece-browsers. “We’ve certainly lost something,” says Royal Academy curator Ann Dumas. “Those cafes are still there in Montparnasse, but they’re just tourist places now.”
What happened to bring about such a marked decline in Paris as an artistic capital is a combination of the unfortunate and the misguided. The stock-market crash of ‘29, the overrunning of Europe by the Nazis in the early 1940s, the ghastly realization of what happened during the Holocaust and the advent of the atomic bomb happened to a lot of great cities and their art communities. But because Paris had so much to offer, it also had the most to lose–its important artists–and it lost many to immigration to the United States. Jerome de Noirmont, a gallery owner in Paris, says, “The U.S. had liberty and a strong economy and literally created a market that attracted artists until the 1970s.”
After the turmoil of 1968, Paris took a reformative hand in helping to do itself in. First, there was what one British critic has called the “brain-denting” French philosophical-psychosocial theory of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Baudrillard. Then the government of Francois Mitterrand precipitously raised taxes–which devoured the kind of private fortunes necessary for risky art-collecting and drove collectors to London, Brussels and Geneva. And although a substantial portion of the new revenue went into cultural projects, the effect on the art market was, long-range, deleterious. Says de Noirmont: “[The government doesn’t] promote art. They just purchase it without much discretion. That breaks the real market.”
France never paid much attention to its own contemporary artists, beginning with the 19th-century impressionists, who were snatched up by rampaging American millionaires. “We’ve never been brilliant when it comes to discerning avant-garde art,” says Guy Amsellem, the head of visual arts for the Ministry of Culture. “The Musee nationale de l’art moderne didn’t buy a Picasso until 1946, and he originally moved to Montmartre in 1905. That’s a long time.” On the other hand, this general evaluation is pockmarked with exceptions. The Louvre is still essential, even for 21st-century neo-neo-neo-dadaists. Many postwar French artists are underrated, either because they seem conservative in a novelty-driven art world or because the disproportionate number of Americans who wrote the history of postwar art don’t like admitting that such artists as Yves Klein were as seminally radical as Jackson Pollock and friends.
One can even say that contemporary art in Paris is on an upswing. It’s just starting–you don’t yet feel it in New York–but it’s definitely happening. In the new contemporary-art space, the Palais de Tokyo, the public is welcome from noon until midnight six days a week, and there’s a salon–done up by a new contemporary artist every six months–where you can settle in with a book or meet friends. Security is provided by young artists who can explain the artwork with passion. “It’s a wonderful playground,” says Ropac. “It may not be great at the moment, but it’s an atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, on the site of a former automotive plant in the rundown suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, Japanese architect Tadao Ando is building a new contemporary museum for the superrich French collector Francois Pinault. Scheduled to open in 2006, the edifice will be as big as the Centre Pompidou and twice as big as the Guggenheim Bilbao. Hopes are that Pinault’s art palace will do what the Pompidou never quite accomplished: give French contemporary art a real shot in the arm. And in the somewhat up-ticked French economy, newer collectors have more money, and their patronage has given the edgier contemporary galleries in the 13th arrondissement boost enough to start mixing in emerging French artists with their foreign fare. That in turn is starting to attract international collectors who will perhaps put Paris back on the map as–can it be true?–the art capital of the world.
No, that won’t happen. Conventional wisdom says that the days of the art capital are over. Artists skip around the globe for inspiration these days. “Since the 1960s, contemporary art has been completely international,” says Christine Macel, curator for contemporary art at the Centre Pompidou. “Some places like London and Berlin have had their moments… But I don’t think we can talk about capitals of contemporary arts anymore. It just isn’t appropriate.” A few years ago the Mexican poet Carlos Fuentes remarked that what creative France needed was “an anti-Cartesian revolution to revive imagination.” What France–and Paris–really need is an art-world amendment to Descartes that says: “I buy and sell, therefore I am.”
