The BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz says these kinds of political tensions in the French art world can be traced back at least as far as the mid-19th Century, to the scandal surrounding the Dreyfus affair, when a Jewish soldier in the French army was made a scapegoat for a crime he didn't commit.

"There's a famous incident around the Dreyfus Affair, which split the avant-garde art world down the middle," he says, "with Degas and Cezanne taking an anti-Semitic line, and Pissaro and Monet siding with Dreyfus.

"It was an issue which rumbled through World War One and Two."

And when it comes to the issue of Le Corbusier, he says, there is a much wider relationship between the worlds of art and politics.

"Modernism as a concept has an awkward relationship with fascism. If you look at Brutalist, Fascist and Modernist architecture, there's a clear relationship. 

"Although Hitler and the Nazi high command vilified modern art, they also drew a great deal of their aesthetic from it."

Frederic Migayrou from the Pompidou Centre vehemently disagrees. 

"This is a manipulation," he says. 

"We can't assimilate the work of Le Corbusier, and Modernism, and Totalitarianism - it's absolutely a false idea."

As for the charge that his institution is helping to draw a veil over Le Corbusier's political activities, Mr Migayrou says the Pompidou Centre is planning a major symposium next year, specifically to debate the issue.

"Things are changing," Xavier de Jarcy concedes.

"It's a step forward."