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We hope you enjoy these snippets from France each month as much as we do!
 Fernand Leger’s gallery in Biot, gave me a different feel for the man and the artist than what I had from just previously seeing his work, most of which had had a strong industrial quality. In this small, quiet community, Leger lived just a few doors from a ceramicist who he worked closely with.
The gallery showed a whole developmental range of works, including earlier works, sketches and colour studies as well as the finished paintings and sculptures alongside each other. His focus on the sunflower and the sun as source of life are evident, and his focus on capturing the purity of colour and light and moved easily from the 2-dimensional to some great sculptural pieces and murals.
 (His colour sense would influence Yves Klein, a younger artist from Nice, whose presence is very evident in the city.) I really liked his more curvy, figurative work. And of course seeing the works to scale is always such a revelation. Unfortuantely there isn’t an English version to this website either, but you can look at the works under the Les Collections link. (Go into the individual thumbnails)
The Musee d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (Modern and Contemporary Art Museum) was also a real treat. A modern octagonal building it is undergoing some further updating, but anyway, it is situated at a corner of Garibaldi Place, where the old part of the city connects to the new, near Nice’s Acropolis Convention Centre, so it is right in the thick of things. I love that it isn’t aloof and separate from life on the square or in the street.
 The public can walk around the top level – a bit like ramparts on a castle – where there are gardens and interesting views all over the city. The idea of such a purpose built building reflects the importance of connection to the gallery – old with new, present with future, art to community and expression of community etc.
It has a great collection of work, and once again, I loved the way groups of works by an artist were exhibited – sometimes with other artists, but there are enough of their own different works, with written and photographic documentation to get an overall feel for the ideas and development of each artist’s work, as well as fitting into a broader context with their peers. I learned a lot!!
 For example I hadn’t realised Nicki de Saint-Phall was born as long ago as 1930. Her work feels so contemporary. (Sadly she died in 2002) And we’d seen this funky sculpture of a jazz trumpet player outside the Hotel Le Negresco, and discovered it was one of hers. It is Miles Davis from 1999. And I had seen these little French phrases around Nice on the streets – hadn’t really noticed where particularly, but recognised the writing when I saw Ben’s work in the gallery… and was to see more of him later as well. (He does have a surname but is just known as ‘Ben’.) There are lots of these connections between what was in the gallery and what was in the street… and the Gallery played the role of connecting between the two. It pointed to art not being just something in a gallery – it’s part of life and every day. It’s really exciting.
 Another example of the everyday being an opportunity for art is La Tête au Carré (thinking inside the box?), created by Sacha Sosno for the Central Library of Nice. It stands 26 metres high, and apparently has three storeys of library and books inside the actual head! When the light is coming from the right direction you can see people moving in there! Tina and I tried to get into this library, but couldn’t find a way in, so maybe Sosno thought the library itself was a bit stuck in a box!
by Heather Ferguson and Tina Butler
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