Nearly a year into his term President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has hardly mentioned the arts or culture. In late February he said that French cuisine should be added to the Unesco World Heritage list. 

De Gaulle had André Malraux at his elbow. François Mitterrand renovated the Louvre. Just before he left office, Jacques Chirac opened an immense museum for non-Western cultures, designed by Jean Nouvel, which in its confusing, heart-of-darkness, overwrought layout epitomizes a certain kind of French arrogance and architectural megalomania. Naturally, millions of tourists now flock to it. 

Every French president since the liberation has cooked up some such pharaonic new museum or opera house or library or initiated some legacy-minded cultural program, until now. Mr. Sarkozy’s taste is said to be for Lionel Ritchie and Celine Dion. (Mitterrand mulled over Dostoyevsky; de Gaulle consumed Chateaubriand.)

The current president’s fondness for showbiz pals, his marriage to the Italian model-turned-singer Carla Bruni and the appointment of a culture minister, Christine Albanel, who is intelligent but widely regarded as weak among Mr. Sarkozy’s ministers, have combined to produce something of a culture shock. 

“A rupture,” is what the political scientist Pascal Perrineau calls it. 

A Lowbrow In High Office Ruffles France