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In his papiers déchirés (torn papers), Arp used drawings, woodcuts, and collages ruined by the damp and dust in his attic in Meudon as his raw material. Tearing the works into rough shapes, he then pasted the fragments on cardboard. "The dying of a picture no longer brought me to despair," said Arp. "I had made my pact with its passing, with its death, and now it was part of the picture for me." The black and white forms, with their oscillations between figure and ground, are pasted into a new and dynamic configuration.