Plate IV from "Fiat modes pereat ars" (Let There Be Fasion, Down with Art) 

This is regarded as Leaf IV in an eight-leaf portfolio. Pillars, cylinders, walls, and floors create a mysterious space within which three small dolls are dispersed. From the woman in the lower right to the man in the bowler hat in the middle left and the man in the upper left, the figures drastically get smaller the further back they are. Although these floor, pillars, and walls all inhabit one single image, they have different vanishing points. The distinction between horizontal and vertical surfaces is also blurred. The man in the bowler hat appears to salute a ball on a ledge. Perhaps it is a cannonball. Max Ernst served as an artillery officer towards the end of World War I, and when the Spanish Civil War (1936) broke out he volunteered to instruct the Republic’s artillery forces, but that never eventuated. Some of his works from his Dada era are subtly interwoven with wartime memories.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)