Curatorial Narrative The “Affiche de recrutement de l’Arme de Vichy L’Empire t’attend, 2e RIC” by Anonymous exists within the fraught temporal landscape of 1940-1942. At this juncture, as the Second World War casts its long shadow over Europe, Art Deco’s sleek modernity and rigorous geometric forms assume a peculiarly dissonant quality, their characteristic dynamism now freighted with an air of anxious futurism. The artist’s employment of linear brushwork imbues the composition with a sense of tensile energy, as if the very act of recruitment is being drawn into a vortex of accelerated time. As this poster assumes its monumental scale approximately 44×68 inches its visual and atmospheric properties undergo a radical transformation. The black-and-white palette, initially stark and austere, develops an almost palpable chromatic structure that seems to hover between the binary extremes of presence and absence. Spatial depth is sub