Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Public policy for supporting the visual arts has historically followed different traditions in France and the United Kingdom. In an environment of fiscal austerity that impacts up on public funding as well as private patronage, and given the tensions between artistic freedomon the one hand, and market constraints on the other, this article examines how these two traditions of financing artists has influenced the direction of the work itself. A brief historical presentation of the two forms of public support and their evolution in recent decades provides a framework for understanding government attitudes and policies on both sides of the Channel. A closer examination of selected artists, chosen here for their representativeness and their international renown, is used to illustrate the changing nature of public support for visual art creation