It must be tough, being a contemporary French artist. All that hinterland to cope with

French postwar artists. Name a few. Apart from Matisse. Well, there was Yves Klein and that woman who worked with him. Alive? Er, how about Louise Bourgeois? Anyone else? Does Jane Birkin count? All right, next question. What is the most exciting artistic event in Paris at the moment? Oh, easy. Monet's eight giant canvases of water lilies in the remodelled Orangerie. When were they painted? Between 1914 and 1926.

It must be tough, being a contemporary French artist. All that hinterland to cope with. All those mould-breaking forebears who had only to cock a snook at the Académie Française and a new western art movement was created for them. Nowadays you can take off all your clothes and run around the City of Light barking like a dog, but no one will take much notice. To make matters worse, here is London, sated with the celebrity of its contemporary artists who have bewitched the market on both sides of the Atlantic, deciding to help Paris out of a cultural cul-de-sac with a huge bespoke celebration of French art.

Paris Calling seems a bit like that: the well-attended British art world deciding to give poor old Paris a bit of a leg-up in the profile stakes. At a press breakfast, the V&A (an institution starting to threaten the mighty Tate as the place for interesting ideas) even rolled out Richard Rogers to cajole us, as if we all needed reminding that Paris was once a city that set art trends.

Lord Rogers told a series of droll tales about designing the Centre Pompidou with Renzo Piano. "After it was built, I was standing outside it in the rain, and a woman with an umbrella passed by," he said. "'What do you think of this building?' she asked me. I told her I was the architect. She immediately hit me with the umbrella."

So, Paris used to be daring and energetic. It still is, say the curators of Paris Calling - and in this season, which runs from June to December this year, select examples of contemporary Parisian art will be brought beyond the périphérique and shown off in venues such as the V&A, Tate Modern, Modern Art Oxford and the Camden Arts Centre.

At the launch, the French curatorial presence seemed unwilling to admit there was anything wrong with the Parisian contemporary art scene. Apart from Swiss-born Marc-Olivier Wahler, that is. "Our artists used to think that to succeed was to succeed in Paris," said the director of the funky Palais de Tokyo. "Switzerland, for example, is too small a country. Artists there need to travel internationally. They don't feel that need in France."

Interestingly, he feels the British and American art scenes have benefited from a national homogeneity that is quite alien to the French, and which is part of the reason a French equivalent has had such difficulty in establishing itself. "Branding objects, and artists, and hype, is the Anglo-Saxon way, whereas in France there is much more questioning, and no consensus about anything." I'm not so sure about this theory. How about the impressionists, and the Fauves, and the Nabis and the cubists, all French-founded art "brands"? Some of these groups even had a manifesto, Monsieur Wahler.

But he insists that French art has been undone by its thoughtfulness. "Everything in France goes through a process of talking and thinking, whereas in New York or London, you can have an idea and just go for it. It's better. It gets things done."

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