Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture
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498
Macmillan (a critical appraisal of social
policy developments in France since the
early 1980s).
social security
Although cover has been extended and provi-
sions have been improved since World War II,
the French social security system has not achieved
the objectives set out by its founder, Pierre
Laroque, in 1945. The system was to be based
on the principles of equality, solidarity and so-
cial democracy, enabling universal access to ben-
efits and services, redistribution of income, and
participation by representatives of employers and
employees in its management, without undue
bureaucratic interference from the state.
The system was designed to protect work-
ers and their families against a number of con-
tingencies that might pose a threat to their
well-being. Three major areas of risk were
covered: sickness, maternity, invalidity, indus-
trial accidents and diseases; old age; and fam-
ily responsibilities. Unemployment assistance
was not an integral part of social security in
the 1940s, and separate schemes have since
developed to cater for the growing number of
unemployed people and for other population
groups not adequately covered by employ-
ment-related insurance.
Social security is funded largely by contri-
butions from employers and employees, pro-
portional to income up to a ceiling, rather than
from taxation. Access to benefits is related to
contributions in line with the insurance prin-
ciple, except in the case of health care, family
allowances and other derived rights, which are
paid, or reimbursed in the case of medical serv-
ices, at fixed rates. Non-contributory benefits
are generally means-tested.
The French system is difficult to classify in
terms of welfare regimes: in some respects it is
universalistic, like the British system as con-
ceived by Beveridge; in others it functions as a
corporatist employment-insurance system, like
that developed in Germany under Bismarck.
The anomalies can be largely explained by the
fact that the system resulted from a compro-
mise in response to the pressures exerted by
different interest groups, intent on preserving
the advantages they derived from existing ar-
rangements. Thus, although a general scheme
was established for employees in commerce
and industry, innumerable special and supple-
mentary schemes (including mutuelles) were
allowed to continue. The whole population is,
in theory, now protected, but the standard of
cover and level of benefits are variable, par-
ticularly with regard to pensions.
Since employers and employees were the
main contributors to the schemes, their repre-
sentatives were made responsible for manag-
ing the funds. Between the 1950s and 1970s—
when the population was growing rapidly, the
economy was thriving and unemployment was
minimal—social security operated efficiently.
Since the mid-1970s, deficits have become en-
demic, and the government has sought ways
to cut back spending and reduce the burden
on employers from high labour costs, while
also coping with the growing problems of un-
employment and social exclusion.
LINDA HANTRAIS
See also: social policy
Further reading
Chatagner, F. (1993) La Protection sociale,
Paris: Le Monde-Éditions (a lively account
of the issues surrounding social security
provision in France).
Revue française des affaires sociales (1995)
Les 50 ans de la sécurité sociale: pourquoi
une protection sociale?, special issue, 49, 4
(a collection of informative articles review-
ing the French social security system).
Sollers, Philippe
b. 1936, Bordeaux
Writer and critic
social security
499
After the conventional and sentimental Une
curieuse solitude (1958), Sollers gained noto-
riety as editor of Tel quel. The structurally
austere late 1960s novels Drame (Drama) and
Nombres (Numbers) were followed by the
humorous and formally more anarchic Lois
(Laws) in 1972 and the unpunctuated ‘epic’
Paradis (Paradise) in 1981. In an apparent
volte-face Sollers abandoned experimental
form with the 1983 work Femmes (Women),
a vast roman-à-clé of the previous decade, and
a critical meditation on society and sexuality.
Since then, as novelist and reviewer in Le
Monde, Sollers articulates an increasingly
ironic perspective on all forms of orthodoxy,
social, literary and intellectual, while affirm-
ing the transcendent value of art.
PATRICK FFRENCH
See also: nouveau roman; poststructuralism;
structuralism
song/chanson
La chanson française (French song) is an im-
portant element of French popular culture
which combines lyric expression, satirical,
political and social commentary with music
which is usually relatively simple, often link-
ing verses to a repeated chorus or refrain. Al-
legedly in crisis today because of the high vol-
ume of anglophone music played on French
radio and television (though a minimum 40
per cent quota of songs in French was imposed
by legislation brought into force in January
1996), French song has none the less produced
a number of outstanding performers and
singer-song-writers since World War II.
The origins of French song can be traced
back to the troubadours, medieval poets of
southern France, and to their northern equiva-
lents, the trouvères. There has always been a
strong oral tradition in France and song has
been used since the medieval period as a vehi-
cle for lyric expression. As a means of articu-
lating emotion, as a popular method of com-
memorating events of national importance or
of expressing satirical or political views, it has
always been an important form of popular
entertainment. Song flourished, then, through
the centuries and by the time of the Third Re-
public, the café-concert, or caf’conc’ as it was
known familiarly, had become one of the most
popular forms of public entertainment and
was to remain so until World War I. The next
notable development in the history of popular
song was the advent of the music hall in Paris
in the early years of this century and this pro-
voked a trend still apparent today: the audi-
ence now listens more than it sings along with
the performer on stage. The music hall saw
the rise to stardom of legendary names:
Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Rose Amy,
Tino Rossi, Josephine Baker, Alibert and so
on. However, with the advent of the cinema,
two-thirds of Parisian concert halls were con-
verted into cinemas between 1910 and 1920.
Anglo-Saxon influences were by now bring-
ing themselves to bear in the world of French
popular music and of French popular enter-
tainment in general. Not only in the cinema
but also in the music hall, American popular
culture made its mark. In music, ragtime, jazz
and blues exerted a strong ongoing influence,
as did a whole succession of popular dances.
The world of music was now changing beyond
recognition: the microphone, the silent cin-
ema, the talkies, television, long-playing
records and, more recently, digitally recorded
CDs and video-clips, have all provoked a
metamorphosis in the French music industry.
The most striking result of technological
innovations and inventions is that, by the end
of World War II, the world is a shrinking place
in which communication has improved be-
yond recognition and in which the fashions of
one continent are immediately accessible to the
inhabitants of another. During the immediate
aftermath of the big-band era, during and af-
ter the period which saw the birth and imme-
diate explosion of rock and roll (the late 1950s
and the early 1960s), during the period which
saw the re-emergence of folk music and the
vogue of the protest song (the 1960s in par-
ticular), popular music became increasingly a
global phenomenon and French song was
song/chanson
500
increasingly open to alluring Anglo-Saxon in-
fluences at a time when American (and also
British) culture in its various manifestations
became a real threat to the homogeneity of
Gallic traditions.
French song, though, was in good health
at the end of World War II. Charles Trenet
had already charmed the French public with
an often poetic, more wholesome form of song
which replaced the vulgar excesses of the songs
which were characteristic of the heyday of the
music hall. While Trenet’s career reached new
heights in the 1950s, Édith Piaf followed in
his footsteps by helping to reverse the trend of
Anglo-Saxonization: she made a huge impact
not only in France but also in America, where
she toured (initially with Les Compagnons de
la chanson) from the late 1940s. In her entou-
rage at various points were several composers
who were later to become outstanding per-
formers in their own right (Montand,
Moustaki and Aznavour, for example).
French song was soon to be transformed,
however, particularly for young people, with
the advent of rock and roll, which was to in-
spire a new form of music in France, known—
quite revealingly—as yé-yé (1960s pop). As-
piring young French singers adopted Anglo-
Saxon names (Johnny Hallyday, Eddy
Mitchell, Sheila, Richard Anthony) and ‘cover
versions’ of American (and later British) songs
became the vogue. The electric guitar (some-
times supplemented by the saxophone and oc-
casionally the trumpet, a legacy of jazz and
the big-band era) now became the most popu-
lar instrument, and loud, catchy music with
extremely simple lyrics captivated the young
and horrified the old.
Alongside the influx of Anglo-Saxon mu-
sic, French song was, none the less, enjoying
something of a new golden age: while caba-
rets on the Left Bank gave birth to a more
intellectual form of song known as the
chanson rive gauche, performers such as
Montand and later Bécaud were to maintain
French traditions (though they did allow jazz,
swing and other imported influences to be in-
corporated in their songs). Even more signifi-
cantly, however, two outstandingly original
talents rejuvenated French, song from the late
1950s: Georges Brassens and the adopted Bel-
gian singer-song-writer Jacques Brel wrote and
recorded songs of the highest quality and, in
the case of Brel, took performance to new
heights.
French popular music has subsequently
undergone the influence of punk, heavy metal,
reggae, rap, Afro-Caribbean and North Afri-
can elements, and so on, but a distinctly Gal-
lic tradition has been maintained in the realm
of the politically committed or provocative
song (Ferrat, Renaud and Gainsbourg, for ex-
ample), in the realm of lyric expression
(Souchon and Cabrel, to name but two) and
in the domain of live performance in venues
as big as Bercy (Sardou’s 1991 and 1993 con-
certs providing examples to set alongside the
more Americanized, but technically brilliant
concerts of Hallyday). Although casual listen-
ing to French airways will not make it imme-
diately apparent, French song is still in good
health today, though the genuine article does
have to be sought out with patience.
IAN PICKUP
See also: music festivals; music venues; rock
and pop
Further reading
Brunschwig, C., Calvet, J.-L. and Klein, J.-C.
(1981) Cent ans de chanson française,
Paris: Éditions du Seuil ‘Collection points’
(an alphabetically arranged reference
work).
Fléouter, C. (1988) Un siècle de chansons,
Paris: PUF (a chronologically arranged ana-
lytical section is followed by an alphabeti-
cally arranged reference section).
Klein, J.-C. (1991) La Chanson française à
l’affiche: histoire de la chanson française
du café-concert à nos jours, Paris: Éd. du
May (an illustrated history of chanson in
the last century).
Rioux, L. (1994) 50 ans de chanson française,
Paris: Archipel (a critical study organized
chronologically).
song/chanson
501
Souchon, Alain
b. 1945, Casablanca, Morocco
Singer-songwriter
Having failed to make an impact for many
years, Alain Souchon suddenly found fame in
the mid-1970s when he teamed up with
Laurent Voulzy to write songs. Souchon’s
somewhat elliptical texts, which juxtapose
what are often wistful images, are comple-
mented perfectly by Voulzy’s music. His stage
and recording persona is that of a perpetual
adolescent lost in an adult world and nostal-
gic for times past. His successes include Bidon
(Phoney), Dix ans (Ten Years Old), Allô
maman bobo (Hello Mummy Hurt), Casa-
blanca and S’asseoir par terre (To Sit Down
on the Ground). An original and enduring tal-
ent.
IAN PICKUP
See also: song/chanson
Soulages, Pierre
b. 1919, Rodez
Artist
Soulages was influenced by the ancient Gallic
megaliths and Romanesque buildings of his
native Rouergue. His palette is dominated by
black and white, and his early figurative paint-
ings present outlines of bare dark trees. In his
first non-figurative compositions, black or
brown shapes, painted with broad energetic
brush strokes, appear on a white ground; he
was interested in calligraphic signs and rhyth-
mic shapes. From 1950, bright colours were
added, giving depth to the black and, in the
1960s, his compositions evolve from strong
contrasts in light and shade to graded tones
from deep black to pale grey. His latest com-
positions are large paintings in luminous black
paint.
ELZA ADAMOWICZ
See also: painting
Soustelle, Jacques
b. 1912, Montpellier, Hérault;
d. 1990
Ethnographer and politician
As a young graduate of the École Normale
Supérieure in the 1930s, Soustelle supported
the left-wing Popular Front, but became a
companion of de Gaulle in London during the
war. During the Fourth Republic, Soustelle
supported Gaullism as an activist and député
in Lyon, helping de Gaulle regain power in
1958. Having served as governor-general in
Algeria and been won over by arguments for
l’Algérie française, he subsequently bitterly
opposed de Gaulle’s policy of abandonment.
Tainted by contacts with the extreme Right,
Soustelle fled France, returning only after the
amnesty of 1968. In 1984, he was elected to
the Académie Française. Rising to intellectual
and political distinction from humble Protes-
tant origins, Soustelle exemplified the social
mobility allowed by educational elitism, and
his split with de Gaulle epitomized the divi-
sive effects of the Algerian war.
HUGH DAUNCEY
See also: decolonization; parties and move-
ments
spelling reform
French spelling vies with English in terms of
inconsistency and difficulty, for native speaker
and foreign learner alike. Contemporary
modifications in spelling are the product of a
historical process which it is necessary to un-
derstand in order to get to grips with twenti-
eth-century spelling reform.
spelling reform
502
Standard French is considered to have
thirty-six phonemes, whereas the written code
possesses as many as forty-three signs (the
twenty-six letters of the alphabet together with
diacritic forms); in addition, through histori-
cal evolution, French contains numerous com-
pound graphemes, e.g. ch, gn, au, eau, ain.
This means that a particular sound may have
several written forms, e.g. [s] in sac, presse,
science, nation, six, leçon; likewise a written
letter or letters can have several values, includ-
ing zero, e.g. s in sac, rose, femmes.
Ideas for spelling reform, or for making the
orthographic system consistent, began to flour-
ish with the development of printed texts and
the consequent evolution of an accepted liter-
ary French. As early as the sixteenth century,
printers and scholars engaged in debate and
experiment to establish a norm for texts in the
vernacular: until this time, Latin had been the
language of scholars and the essential written
language, but French had many features alien
to Latin. G.Tory, for example, recommends the
use of the cedilla, apostrophe and accents, and
other sixteenth-century printers rapidly de-
velop proposals for a modern orthographic
system, including the separation of ‘i’ and ‘j’,
‘u’ and ‘v’.
The seventeenth century recognized a tra-
ditional spelling lingering on with certain writ-
ers and officials, together with the new, re-
formed orthography. However, the first edi-
tion of the Academy dictionary (1694) de-
clared that it wished to follow l’ancienne
orthographe. Scholars such as Richelet, and
writers like Corneille, continued to argue for
(and to use) a spelling code in which the writ-
ten form attempts to reproduce the spoken
form as closely as possible, reducing double
consonants, eliminating parasitic letters and
making full use of the diacritics.
The various editions of the Academy diction-
aries have authorized various spelling reforms—
in particular the third edition (1740), which
modified up to 6,000 words and gave French
its modern shape by eliminating some superflu-
ous letters; one example is the replacement of
preconsonantal s by a circumflex on the pre-
ceding vowel. The 1835 edition replaces oi by
ai in many words, e.g. français (French), paraître
(appear) and, more importantly, in all condi-
tional and imperfect endings. The eighth edi-
tion (1932–5), replaces the apostrophe in nouns
such as grand’mère (grandmother) by a hyphen
and modifies some 500 words in total.
In the twentieth century, there have been
numerous projects for spelling reform—
Dauzat (1939), Beslais (1952), Thimonnier
(1967), Conseil Supérieur de la Langue
Française (1990)—all of which have revealed
the inconsistencies of French but failed to pro-
vide acceptable solutions. Certain phenomena
are regularly cited: double consonants, Greek
features (th, rh, ph, y), mute consonants, hy-
phen, circumflex and other diacritics, as well
as individual anomalies.
The failure of the Academy to adopt the
limited programme of reforms in 1990 is tes-
timony to the stability of French spelling, how-
ever eccentric, but this should not conceal the
fact that French has come to accept many
changes and will continue to do so.
Jo REED
See also: Academic Française; linguistic regu-
lation
sport
Modern sports, like the industrialization and
urbanization of which they were historically
an expression, came late to France, but have
since been widely disseminated, developing in
ways which reflect the demographic, economic
and even political character of French society.
Having been introduced from Britain in the
1880s, the first modern sports (rugby, foot-
ball, athletics) were initially the preserve of
fashionable Parisian society, as exemplified by
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the
modern Olympic Games. However, as the ap-
peal of these sporting imports spread, they
were democratized, commercialized, ever
more intensely mediated, and joined by indig-
enous sports, such as France’s first and still
most important sporting spectacle,
sport
503
professional cycling, epitomized since 1903 by
the Tour de France, an event perfectly adapted
to the demographic reality of a nation of many
small rural or semi-rural communities as well
as a few major conurbations.
State involvement in the organization of
sport dates back to the 1901 law on associa-
tions, which requires formal registration of
sports (and all other) clubs. Such associations,
which may be single-sport but are more often
multi-sport, must be affiliated to the appro-
priate national federation(s), which in turn
come under the umbrella of the Comité Na-
tional Olympique et Sportif Français (CNOSF).
Each governing body is authorized to admin-
ister its own sport, receiving significant fund-
ing to enable it to carry out its responsibilities.
Such is the federations’ power that no sports-
man or sportswoman may participate in for-
mally constituted matches, leagues or champi-
onships without previously having been
granted a licence by the appropriate federa-
tion. The numbers of such licenciés (licence-
holders) indicate that football is the most popu-
lar team sport in France, with tennis, skiing
and cycling being the major individual sports
(both in competitive and leisure terms), fol-
lowed by ‘minority’ interests like judo, bas-
ketball, rugby, horse riding, sailing and golf.
The democratization in the 1970s and 1980s
of hitherto socially exclusive sports like tennis
and skiing reflects a general rise in disposable
incomes available for leisure expenditure, to-
gether with improvements in sports and travel
infrastructures. It also underlines the success
of state initiatives such as the now firmly es-
tablished classes de neige (skiing classes for
schoolchildren), which began in the 1950s.
Spectator sport similarly reflects a preoc-
cupation with soccer, with the televised per-
formances of the leading clubs and, especially,
of the national side in international competi-
tions representing a regular high point for
viewing figures. (Half of all French TV view-
ers are believed to have watched Michel
Platini’s team in the 1986 World Cup semi-
final.) François Mitterrand, as president of the
Republic, maintained a tradition first estab-
lished by Charles de Gaulle of identifying the
nation with top-level sport by regularly attend-
ing the final of the French football knockout
cup. His re-establishment in 1991 of a full
ministry for youth and sport underlined the
renewed importance attached to sport under
his presidency, as did the doubling of the
weighting attached to the physical education
component of the baccalauréat school-leaving
examination in 1995.
De Gaulle’s own well publicized attachment
to rugby union—a sport rooted firmly in south-
west France, where it has given rise to a unique,
and regularly applauded, style of play which
is the source of considerable local (specifically
municipal) pride—was part of the transforma-
tion of a regional passion into a national pre-
occupation made possible by the massive ex-
pansion of televised sports coverage from the
1950s onwards. (Today’s TV highlights also
include particularly the Open tennis champi-
onships at Roland Garros and the ‘the hell of
the north’, the Paris-Roubaix cycle race). The
appointment, under Georges Pompidou’s presi-
dency, of Jacques Chaban-Delmas (a former
rugby and tennis international) to the post of
prime minister is likewise of significance as
regards the process of national identification
with sports stars, as is the massive coverage
provided by both a specialist press (notably
L’Équipe and Le Miroir des sports) and the
general national (and especially regional) press.
Indeed, such is French sport’s sociological sig-
nificance that it has periodically attracted the
attention of distinguished commentators from
Barthes to Bourdieu.
Such diverse factors as long-term structural
unemployment, the television-led emergence of
the home as the primary cultural space, the
collapse of established social hierarchies includ-
ing particularly traditional gender roles, the
advent of le sport-business (typified, in spite
of recent set-backs, by Bernard Tapie) and even
administrative decentralization can all be
linked to changes in French leisure patterns.
The rise of the so-called ‘Californian’ sports
(such as windsurfing and hang-gliding) and the
‘informal’ use of new sporting spaces (such as
street basketball or skateboarding) reflect pro-
found changes in French society, as they do in
sport
504
other developed industrial nations. The cen-
tralized and hierarchical model of sports ad-
ministration is increasingly challenged by the
development of sporting activity outside the
formal structures of the federations (including
jogging, aerobics and modern dance), as part
of broader social changes often characterized
as the privatization of leisure. In these circum-
stances, the vexed question of whether (as has
sometimes been optimistically suggested) sport
may provide a privileged mechanism for the
integration of alienated youth of ethnic minor-
ity origin remains undecided.
PHILIP DINE
See also: horse racing; motor sport; pétanque;
regional press in France; sport and education;
sports funding; winter sports
Further reading
Dine, P. (1995) ‘The Tradition of Violence in
French Sport’, in R.Günther and R.
Windebank (eds) Violence and Conflict in
Modern French Culture, Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press (an examination of continui-
ties and changes in French sporting practices).
Greaves, A. (1993) ‘Sport in France’, in M.
Cook (ed.) French Culture Since 1945, Lon-
don: Longman (an overview of the topic
which is particularly incisive on links with
the national education system ).
Holt, R. (1981) Sport and Society in Modem
France, London: Macmillan (the classic
English-language account of the rise of
French sport).
Hubscher, R., Durry, J., Jeu, B. and Garrier,
G. (1992) L’Histoire en mouvements: le
sport dans la société française (XIXe–XXe
siècle), Paris: Armand Colin (a major col-
laborative survey of the history and sociol-
ogy of sport in France).
sport and education
Since World War II, the French Ministry of
Education and the Ministry of Youth, Sport
and Leisure have strengthened considerably
the role of sport in the lives of French youth
and have developed professional qualifications
in sport and exercise science in universities
(Sciences et Techniques des Activités Physiques
et Sportives). Sporting facilities have been radi-
cally improved in educational and municipal
establishments throughout the country.
Historically, physical education in France
was associated with the military, although as
early as 1817 the government was supporting
a mixed civil and military training centre (the
Gymnase Normal Civil et Militaire). It was
only in 1937, however, that the first Ministère
des Sports (sports ministry) was created, along
with sports diplomas. This new ministry was
responsible for sport and physical education
in educational establishments (gymnastics had
been compulsory in secondary schools since a
decree of 1869). The Vichy government rein-
forced the trend with a Commissariat for gen-
eral education and sport and, in the aftermath
of the war, the Institut National du Sport (Na-
tional Institute for Sport) was created in 1945.
In 1958, the Fifth Republic formed the so-
called Commissariat à la Jeunesse et aux
Sports (Youth and Sports Commission) before
transforming it into a ministry in 1966. In
1968 it became a Secrétariat d’État (ministry
of state). Sport was, then, being increasingly
recognized as an important element in the cur-
riculum (as witnessed, for example, in the of-
ficial instructions issued to educational estab-
lishments in 1967 which proclaimed the cru-
cial role of sport and competition in the pur-
suit of ‘material and spiritual progress’).
Another highly significant development of
national importance was the merging in 1976
of the Écoles Normales Supérieures
d’Éducation Physique (the top-level teacher-
training establishments for physical education)
and the Institut National des Sports (National
Institute of Sport), which became the prestig-
ious Institut National du Sport et de l’Éducation
Physique, or INSEP (the National Institute of
Sport and Physical Education). This institute
now attracts the elite of French sportsmen and
sportswomen and has done much to improve
France’s standing in the world of sport.
sport and education
505
The Ministère des Sports oversees school,
university and civil sport from international
level down to that of the départements; it
maintains close relations with the federations
which control individual sports. Each federa-
tion has a national technical director (DTN)
who is at the top of a pyramid which goes all
the way down to individual clubs. School
sport has its national ‘union’ at primary and
secondary level (Union Sportive des Écoles
Primaires, Union Nationale du Sport Scolaire),
while universities have their own sports fed-
eration (Fédération Nationale du Sport
Universitaire). Despite the undoubted im-
provements in organization, training and
sports facilities, France had limited success in
competitive sport before the outstanding
achievements at the Atlanta Olympic Games
in 1996. The country has also made great
strides in tennis, has maintained its high stand-
ards in rugby and improved them significantly
in football.
IAN PICKUP
See also: athletics; cycling; motor sport;
pétanque; sport; Tour de France; water sports;
winter sports
Further reading
Dicosport 1996 (1996), Paris: Dicosport/
Éditions Presse Audiovisuelle (a dictionary
of French and world sport published annu-
ally).
Thomas, R. (1981) L’Éducation physique,
Paris: PUF (an account of the history, de-
velopment and organization of physical
education in France).
sports funding
French sport relies upon both public and pri-
vate funding, with a central role played by lo-
cal government. The principle of state involve-
ment in the organization and funding of sport
became firmly established as part of the
broader process of economic and social recon-
struction which occurred after World War II.
The present Ministère de la Jeunesse et des
Sports administers the financial support given
to the national federations responsible for over-
seeing individual sports. While seldom exceed-
ing 0.2 per cent of total government expendi-
ture, this funding has provided both a lifeline
for the weaker organizations and a means of
exerting influence on sports development for
the government. At present, state support may
make up anything between 10 and 90 per cent
of the revenue of an individual federation, de-
pending on its ability to generate additional
income from subscriptions, sponsorship and
television rights, with the average figure being
in the region of 40 per cent. (These and other
statistics cited are derived from Miège 1993.)
Since the early 1960s, such aid has taken two
main forms: personnel and grants. Some 1,700
technical advisers are made available to indi-
vidual federations at both national and local
levels. The salaries of these civil servants, like
the awards made by the ministry to cover the
federations’ operating costs and their support
for top-level performers, are financed jointly
through direct taxation and the Fonds National
pour le Développement du Sport (FNDS), a
specifically targeted levy on alcohol sales and
gambling (principally horse racing and the na-
tional lottery, including its version of the foot-
ball pools, the loto sportif). Since the adminis-
trative decentralization of 1983, the state has
ceased to be directly involved in the financing
of capital projects, with the exception of ma-
jor initiatives such as the loss-making
Albertville Olympic Games in 1992 and the
new national stadium in the Paris suburbs. The
regions and the départements have thus joined
the communes in what has long been a privi-
leged field of local government action, with
an average 7 per cent of municipal funds cur-
rently devoted to sport, and over one-third of
the total sports budget coming from the mu-
nicipalities. The involvement of the regions and
the départements, at under 4 per cent, remains
modest, but is rapidly expanding. However, this
apparently solid structure is under strain as a
result of a general crisis of commercialization,
sports funding
506
with entrepreneurial attitudes replacing a tra-
ditional associative ethos reliant upon volun-
tary involvement. The funding of professional
sport has similarly been subject to stress, as
evidenced by both regular administrative re-
forms and the periodic financial crises of ma-
jor clubs (most notably Bernard Tapie’s
Olympique de Marseille).
PHILIP DINE
See also: sport
Further reading
Conseil National de la Vie Associative (1993)
Les Associations à l’épreuve de la
décentralisation: Bilan 1991–1992, Paris:
La Documentation Française (a detailed
report on the impact of a decade of decen-
tralization on French associations, includ-
ing particularly sports clubs).
Miège, C. (1993) Les Institutions sportives,
Paris: PUF (an introductory survey of the
administrative structures of French sport).
Staël, Nicolas de
b. 1914, St Petersburg, Russia;
d. 1955, Antibes
Artist
Nicolas de Staël’s painting helped to define
the lyrical and expressive form of abstraction
that evolved in Paris and elsewhere in the post-
war years. A Russian émigré, orphaned soon
after his family was forced into exile, he was
adopted by Russian expatriates living in Brus-
sels, where he studied at the Academic Royale
des Beaux-Arts. After serving in the Foreign
Legion, he moved to France in 1940, settling
for a time in Nice, where, through his com-
panion, Jeannine Guillou, he made the ac-
quaintance of a group of abstract artists in-
cluding Magnelli, Marie Raymond (Yves
Klein’s mother) and Sonia and Robert
Delaunay. Their influence led him to abandon
the figurative painting he had practised before
the war in favour of abstraction.
After settling in Paris in 1943, he began to
show his work in exhibitions alongside
abstractionists such Domela, Kandinsky and
Magnelli. His Compositions (1943/4) distin-
guished him from the ‘geometric’ abstractionists
represented by Mondrian’s successors—
Magnelli and Vasarély, for example—and iden-
tified him with the expressive and lyrical form
of abstraction that was evolving as an alterna-
tive. While these early, rather decorative, works
lacked a certain assurance, from 1946 onwards
Staël proved that abstract painting could ex-
press mood while remaining self-referential. His
De la danse (1946) has been hailed as an ex-
pression of ‘pure painting’, with its subtle and
sombre beiges and grey-blues translating his
subjective state at the time. The misery of these
early years, which had been marked by penury
and the death of Jeannine, began to dissipate
with his marriage to Françoise Chapouton and
growing artistic success. In 1948, he acquired
French citizenship.
The influence of his friend Georges Braque,
and his admiration for the painterly qualities
in the work of artists such as Rembrandt, may
have led him to focus on colour and texture,
while a fellow Russian émigré, André Lanskoy,
is said to have taught him, through example,
the technique of applying thick paint with a
palette knife to produce the rich, tactile sur-
faces that distinguish his work of the late
1940s. The expressive qualities of texture, also
seen in Jean Fautrier’s Otages of 1945, was to
become a recognizable characteristic of the lyri-
cal form of abstraction with which Staël is as-
sociated.
From 1952, figurative elements began to
appear in his paintings—still lifes, landscapes,
the human body. A floodlit football match at
the Parc des Princes in 1952 inspired his
Footballeurs series, which provoked enthusiasm
in the public and condemnation from the de-
fenders of abstract art. Yet his human figures
are treated as compact masses of colour, with-
out a psychological or even an anatomical pres-
ence, and are analysable in purely formal terms,
Staël, Nicolas de
507
while his seascapes Marine claire and Marine
foncée (both 1955) also serve to show that the
distinction between abstract and representa-
tional art is, in many respects, meaningless.
The last five years of Staël’s life were
marked by international acclaim, with impor-
tant exhibitions in New York, London and
other European cities. He committed suicide
in March 1955 while working on paintings
for two exhibitions planned for the summer.
Since his death, his paintings have continued
to be exhibited on a regular basis throughout
Europe and America.
CAROL WILCOX
See also: painting
Further reading
Chastel, A. (ed.) (1972) Staël, Paris: Maeght
(this wide range of reproductions of Staël’s
work is prefaced by a leading French art
historian).
Dumur, G. (1989) Nicolas de Staël, Paris:
Flammarion (an interesting evaluation of
Staël’s life and work, even if the style is
rather flowery ).
stars
Star studies have been an important part of
film studies since the late 1970s, but tend to
focus on Hollywood stars. There are therefore
problems of definition in relation to French
stars, who do not work in a studio system, and
who cross over popular genres (comedies, po-
lice thrillers) and auteurist art films. If box of-
fice is used to justify star status, then the French
star system is overwhelmingly masculine and
dominated by popular genres, with an empha-
sis on comedy. In the postwar period, Louis de
Funès and Bourvil, whose greatest joint suc-
cess was Oury’s comedy La Grande Vadrouille
(1966), dominated the 1960s, just as Belmondo
and Delon dominated the 1970s in a mixture
of comic action films and thrillers. During the
1980s and since, Depardieu has topped the
league as the main male French star, whose
appearance can ensure a film’s success, such
as in Dupeyron’s Drôle d’endroit pour une
rencontre in 1988. A 1990 poll by Télérama,
however, placed Gabin at the top, followed by
Gérard Philipe, and included Montand in its
first six, suggesting that box office is not the
only condition for stardom. The same poll
listed the following women as stars, in rank
order: Romy Schneider, Michèle Morgan,
Simone Signoret, Isabelle Adjani, Catherine
Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot. While Schneider has
always been popular with French audiences,
it is curious that Bardot should figure so low
(only 8 per cent voted her as their favourite),
since she seems the epitome of the female star,
her retirement patterned on Garbo’s. The 1990
poll also asked respondents who the stars of
tomorrow might be, and these (including
Sophie Marceau, Emmanuelle Béart and
Juliette Binoche) seem more likely candidates
for star status. Stardom might therefore seem
to be ephemeral, but this is contradicted by
the first list of stars given in the same poll, since
Schneider’s decade was the 1970s (she died in
1982), and Signoret’s decade straddled the
1960s and 1970s (she died in 1985). Another
criterion is international status. Those who
might be considered major stars in 1996—
Adjani, Binoche and Depardieu—have all been
in Hollywood films (although Depardieu was
a star before Green Card). Conversely, Ardant
has been in a number of European films since
Swann in Love, often by well-known directors:
Tato’s Desiderio (1984, in Italy), Scola’s La
Famiglia (1987, in Italy/France), Von Trotta’s
adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Paura
e amore (1988, in Italy/Germany/France),
Peploe’s Afraid of the Dark (1991, in France/
Great Britain) and Bellocchio’s Il Sogno della
Farfalla (1992, in Italy/France/Switzerland);
but despite this, and despite her association
with Truffaut, Ardant is not seen as a star. It
would therefore seem that to be a star in the
French system, you have to act in Hollywood
films. The second major point to emerge is that
stars, like the desires which give rise to them,
fade, although at different speeds of light.
stars