French Cultural Exceptionalism

Succinctly summarised by the cultural economist Joëlle Farchy, French cultural exceptionalism is the conviction that ‘books, films and musical works are not run-of-the-mill goods which can be abandoned to the laws of the free market. When unpacked with the help of economic theory, Farchy goes on, this conviction implies that the exchange value of a cultural good can only be measured by means of a ‘convention of originality’, that is, by what the market conventionally considers original and originality, in art markets generally, is gauged according to three criteria. The first is authenticity, which here means that a work of art must be produced by an artist alone, with as little division of labour as possible. The second is that the work must be unique so that reproductions of it are considered of lesser value. The third is newness, according to which a work of art’s value is judged in relation to art history.