Hitler 

Jean Arp made this collage using paper and glue, two materials of everyday life, during a period of intense political unrest. Arp has built a world of imagery out of scraps: an arrow, a target, and most striking, a headline reading "The Hitler Gang." Each fragment has been torn and adhered to the canvas with consideration, resulting in a deliberately destabilized composition. Notice how Arp layers these textual and symbolic elements to evoke the chaotic atmosphere of pre-war Europe. The use of collage, a technique often associated with Dada and Surrealism, allows Arp to challenge traditional notions of art-making. He transforms ephemeral materials into a powerful statement, blurring the boundaries between high art and the ephemera of daily life. This piece asks us to consider the labor of artmaking as one of accumulation, one of cultural commentary, and as a resistance to the growing wave of fascism at the time.