Nice in Nice

If you're in Nice in the next six weeks, check out the Alain Jacquet retrospective, 'Camouflages et Trames' (Camouflage works and photo screens) at MAMAC (Musee d'art Moderne et d'art Contemporain). Jacquet, born in 1939, is best known for 1960s pieces such as Camouflage Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1963) and Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe (1964), that walked the tightrope between European Nouveau Realism (Yves Klein, Christo, et al) and US Pop Art. Despite their referential nature (mixing art history and pop icons, whether Roy Lichtenstein or Walt Disney characters), most of these works still have a freshness about them. Jacquet's 1970s photo screen pieces, based on Nasa photos of the Earth and the rest of our solar system, are less captivating, but also still worth a look.
One (permanent) collection you should check out while in Nice is The Marc Chagall Biblical Message Museum, which gathers together some of the painter's works on biblical themes, most notably 12 large format paintings (completed between 1954 and 1967) illustrating stories from Genesis and Exodus (such as Noah's Ark) and five compositions illustrating another book of the Old Testament, The Song of Songs. Above all, the colours have to be seen to be believed.
Nice is also a great city for food, whether ice creams from Fenocchio (the award-winning local chain, that offers such flavours as bergamot, irish coffee, tomato and basil and strawberry tagada - a popular French sweet), Socca (the local variant on Pizza) from a snack bar, or truffles, ravioli and pigeon wing from the Michelin-starred L'Univers Christian Plumail.