The five-metre wide Grand Opera, Paris, one of his earlier cardboard works, depicts its subject in a myriad of dizzy unfinished details, washes and vigorous brushstrokes that turn the solid structure into a half-idealized, half-non-existing precarious castle in the air. We see the building from below, in traditional composition, but the uneven surface on which it is painted makes it fragmented, unhinged, as if it were breaking away from its support.