문화민주주의와 프랑스의 문화예술 지원정책

In the contemporary world, a new development paradigm is emerging that links the democracy and culture. The main argument about democracy and culture may be grouped around the conflict between two paradigms: the democratization of culture versus cultural democracy. Government cultural policies, notably in France, are mainly steered toward the democratization of culture. A model of cultural democracy may be defined as one founded on free individual choice, in which the role of a cultural policy is not to interfere with the preferences expressed by citizen-consumers but to support the choices made by individuals or social groups through a regulatory policy applied to the distribution of information or the structures of supply, as happens in other types of markets. The modern post of Minister of Culture was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1959. The first Minister Andre Malraux was responsible for realizing the goals of the “droit a la culture” (“the right to culture”) by democratizing access to culture. To this end, he created numerous regional cultural centers throughout France and actively sponsored the arts. Malraux"s artistic tastes included the modern arts and the avant-garde, but on the whole he remained conservative. Under president Francois Mitterrand the Minister of Culture was Jack Lang who showed himself to be far more open to popular cultural production, including jazz, rock and roll, rap music, graffiti art, cartoons, comic books, fashion and food. His famous phrase “economie et culture, meme combat” is representative of his commitment to cultural democracy and to active national sponsorship and participation in cultural production.