While the rupture between artists and the "bourgeois" has marked the modern avant-garde in the postmodern era, market failures and the State's financial crisis are obliging artists to turn anew toward the public at large. And while there is a certain incomprehension in the relationship between artists and the public (witness the controversies surrounding current art), there is also emerging a new ideology and new practices that can be viewed as "anti-ruptures," carrying with them a certain ambivalence with respect to the status of the artist. The process of creation (live art, open workshops, improvisation, invitations to rehearsals, etc.) is being disclosed — and valorized — at the same time as the public's artistic competence (awards discerned by the public, interactive art, etc.) is being acknowledged. At one and the same time, art is stepping onto the public's terrain and attempting to draw the latter onto its own. This has produced a reconsideration of artistic categories and sites (popular art/avant-garde art, regions/metropolises.