France

B

Art and Architecture

France has produced many world-famous painters, and several influential schools of painting, including impressionism, were developed here. Among French Mannerist painters of the 16th century were Jean Clouet and his son François; 17th-century baroque artists included Georges de La Tour, Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorrain. The most renowned French rococo masters of the 18th century were Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean Fragonard, Jean Chardin, and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Paris became the chief art center of Europe in the 19th century. Jacques-Louis David, whose highly influential career began in the last quarter of the 18th century, was most active in the early 19th century, as were the romantic painters Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, and Théodore Géricault. Noted realist artists of the mid-19th century were Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Jean François Millet, and Camile Corot. The impressionist school, influenced by Édouard Manet, emerged around 1872; its most important members were the painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Major French postimpressionist painters of the late 19th century were Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Signac; also active in this period were Henri Rousseau and Gustav Moreau. Internationally known French artists of the 20th century include Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Georges Rouault, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Pierre Bonnard, and Jean Dubuffet. The artist Pablo Picasso was born in Spain but settled in Paris in the early 1900s.

France has also produced many influential sculptors. Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon were famous 16th-century Mannerist sculptors; in the 17th century Pierre Puget sculpted in the baroque style; Puget inspired the 18th-century French rococo sculptors Jean Baptiste Pigalle and Claude Michel. Leading 19th-century sculptors were François Rude, Antoine Louis Barye, and Jean Baptiste Carpeaux. The most important 19th-century sculptor, however, was Auguste Rodin. In the early 20th century Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi and Italian-born Amedeo Modigliani both worked in Paris. Noted artists Marcel Duchamp and Jean Arp also sculpted in Paris in the 20th century.

France is renowned for its great Gothic churches, built from the 12th to 15th century. Particularly significant are the abbey church at Saint-Denis, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and the cathedrals at Amiens, Chartres, Paris, and Reims. Splendid Renaissance structures include the palace at Fontainebleau and the famous châteaux of the Loire River valley. The outstanding baroque buildings in France are the neoclassicized enlargements of the enormous royal palace at Versailles and the Louvre, in Paris. Among the outstanding structures of the 19th century are the Second Empire Paris Opéra (1861-1875) of Charles Garnier and the wrought-iron Eiffel Tower (1889), the symbol of Paris. The pioneering 20th-century architect Auguste Perret and the influential Le Corbusier (a Swiss living in Paris) were noted for designing daring structures, mainly of concrete and steel.

C

Music

France has a long and distinguished musical tradition. From the 11th to the 13th century, chansons de geste (“song of deeds”), epic poems sung by minstrels, were produced in northern France, and the troubadours, aristocratic poet-musicians who composed famous songs that dealt chiefly with courtly love, war, and nature, were active in southern France.

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The most influential French composer of the 14th century was Guillaume de Machaut, who contributed to the polyphonic form of composition. In the 15th and 16th centuries, songs, motets, and settings of parts of the Mass were among the leading French musical compositions.

In the second half of the 17th century, the Italian-born composer Jean Baptiste Lully created a French operatic style by combining traditional court spectacle with plots of contemporary French dramas, set to musical forms from ballet, dance, and Italian opera. In the early 18th century noted works for harpsichord were composed by François Couperin and Jean Philippe Rameau; the latter is also known for his operas.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, many foreign-born opera composers were active in Paris; these included Christoph Willibald Gluck, Luigi Cherubini, A.E.M. Grétry, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Jacques Offenbach. French-born opera composers of the 19th century included Jacques Halévy, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet.

The chief French composer of orchestral music in the early 19th century was Hector Berlioz. Camille Saint-Saëns became active in the 1850s, and he later taught Gabriel Fauré, who composed in a wide variety of forms. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Claude Debussy composed noted works in new styles influenced by trends in literature and painting.

In the early 20th century Maurice Ravel produced works with more formal outlines. Les Six, a group of neoclassic composers formed in 1918 and 1919, included Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Georges Auric. The influential Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky worked in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. More recent French composers include Oliver Messiaen and Pierre Boulez.

D

Libraries and Museums

Most provincial cities in France have municipal libraries and museums. The largest concentration of such facilities is, however, in Paris. Major libraries in Paris include the Bibliothèque Nationale, with more than 9 million books, and the libraries of the Universities of Paris. The Louvre, also in Paris, contains one of the largest and most important art collections in the world. Other Parisian museums of note include the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne in the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou (see Pompidou Center); the Musée d’Orsay; and the Musée Picasso with its collection of works by Pablo Picasso. Many of the great masterpieces of French architecture, such as churches, cathedrals, castles, and châteaux, are maintained as national monuments.

V

Economy of France

A

Overview

Until the early 20th century, France was still largely a nation of small farms and family-owned businesses. After World War II (1939-1945) the French government nationalized numerous business enterprises—especially in energy, finance, and manufacturing—and it introduced a series of development plans intended to modernize the economy. These reforms, along with European economic integration, helped secure a period of sustained economic growth in the quarter century following the war. Today, France is one of the world’s leading economic powers. A member of the Group of Eight forum of highly industrialized nations and of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), France is home to one of the world’s largest economies. It is also the leading agricultural producer in western Europe. In 2007 France’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $2.59 trillion, and per capita income was $41,969.90.

The postwar economic integration of western Europe had a powerful influence on the French economy. France was a charter member of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a cooperative organization founded in 1951 to establish a free-trade area for coal and steel products. This organization merged with the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) in 1967 to form the European Community (EC).

Today, France is a member of the European Union (EU), a successor of the EC that promotes economic and political cooperation among European nations. European Union members share a common economic area. The creation of a single market required France and other EU members to remove national barriers to the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. French businesses long protected by trade barriers have been forced to become more competitive to withstand foreign challengers and to take advantage of new opportunities. In many sectors of the economy, the single market has spurred businesses to restructure and modernize their operations. France, like many other EU members, uses the euro, the EU’s common currency.

Successive French governments have encouraged varying levels of intervention in the economy, including state ownership and control of key industries. In 1982 the Socialist-led government of president François Mitterrand initiated a program of extensive nationalization. At the peak of this program, 13 of the 20 largest firms in France were owned by the state. The election of a center-right parliamentary majority in 1986, however, led to a reduction of state ownership. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the government continued the process of privatization, selling off a variety of state-owned enterprises and reducing its holdings in others. Despite these measures, the public sector as a share of GDP remains higher in France than in any other country to adopt the euro. In addition, France’s progress in opening its domestic markets to foreign competition as required by the EU, especially in the energy sector, has been slow, inviting criticism and legal challenges from the EU.

France faced several pressing economic problems in the early 21st century. One was the nation’s persistently high unemployment rate. Efforts to lower unemployment, including government legislation implemented in 2000 to reduce the official working week from 39 hours to 35 hours, had limited success. The lack of vigorous economic growth has also made it more difficult for France to maintain the traditionally generous social welfare benefits available to the country’s citizens. Reforming the welfare state in a socially equitable manner remains a major challenge for France in the decades ahead.

B

The Government’s Role in the Economy

The principle of a mixed economy, in which both government and private businesses exercise influence over various sectors of the economy has long been accepted in France. The efforts of French public officials to shape the economy are often traced back to 17th-century statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Under Colbert, an economic adviser to Louis XIV, king of France, the French state centralized control over key industries and regulated international trade. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, government intervention in the economy declined. This trend changed after World War II, when vigorous government planning played a major role in France’s postwar economic revival. Bold national plans were approved to promote economic growth and reconstruction of war-damaged industries, communications networks, and other infrastructure.

After World War II the French state acquired a number of businesses, created others from scratch, and adjusted the overall mix of enterprises it owned. Legislation creating a nationalized railroad system was passed in 1937. Soon after the war ended, air transportation, major banks, and coal mines came under government control. In addition, the government became a major shareholder in the automotive, electronics, and aircraft and air transportation industries, as well as the primary investor in the development of oil and natural gas reserves. From 1946 until 1981, the public sector changed little in scope. Following the Socialist Party’s victory in 1981, however, state ownership and control expanded dramatically. In 1986 the new center-right government launched a privatization program. Since then, the government has gradually reduced its holdings in most economic sectors, including telecommunications, air transportation, finance, and insurance.

The first national economic plan was developed in 1947, under the leadership of French statesman Jean Monnet. An economic planning agency was authorized to develop a new plan every four or five years. The agency convened a series of commissions, each composed of representatives of government, business, and labor, to study the economy and to discuss ways to achieve growth and production targets. During the early years of planning, ambitious growth goals were often exceeded. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, however, planning appeared to lose much of its effectiveness as slow growth, rising unemployment, and inflation became persistent economic problems. French economic planners found it increasingly difficult to forecast economic trends as the French economy became more complex and more open to international influences. Today, national economic planning is no longer a highly visible feature of French economic policy.

The French government uses various tools to promote economic growth and stability. Until recently, these included fiscal and monetary policies, which involve the government’s powers to tax and spend and to control the supply of money. Fiscal policies generally seek to encourage economic expansion when economic growth is lagging or unemployment is high. They also try to encourage economic contraction when demand for goods and services is high enough to generate inflation (see Inflation and Deflation). Fiscal policies to promote economic expansion include cutting taxes and increasing government spending. These policies aim to stimulate demand by giving individuals and businesses more money to spend. Since the mid-1970s, the French government has generally pursued expansionary fiscal policies, and government expenditures have consistently exceeded government revenues. Under the terms of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) established by the European Union (EU), France and other participating EU members pledged to restrain their use of fiscal policies to keep their budget deficits below 3 percent of GDP. However, after France failed to meet the 3 percent limit in the early 2000s, the government received a formal warning from the EU’s European Commission to restrain government spending. EMU participants are not permitted to use monetary policies—efforts to adjust the supply and demand for money—to fine-tune their economies. Since 1999 the supranational European Central Bank (ECB) has set monetary policy for all EMU participants.

Government revenue in France comes from a variety of sources. The most important sources include social security contributions; the value-added tax (VAT, a national sales tax); a special tax on income, instituted in 1991 and earmarked to finance the social security system; and the personal income tax. In general, France tends to rely on indirect taxes, such as the VAT, rather than direct taxes, such as the personal income tax. France was the first country to implement the VAT, the primary indirect tax used today throughout Europe. A wealth tax is levied on household assets that exceed a set limit. France is one of the most heavily taxed nations in Europe.

Public expenditure accounts for a large percentage of GDP in France—generally more than 40 percent. Principal government expenditures include social security; compensation of government employees; interest payments on the national debt; investment in tangible assets, such as infrastructure and military hardware; payment of pensions; and payments to the EU. The regional and local governments generate tax revenue themselves, but they also rely heavily on transfers from the national government. Regional and local governments maintain the roads, oversee public assistance, and share responsibility for the educational system.

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