Fiat modes, pereat ars (Long live fashion, down with art) is Ernst's first lithographic work, and exemplifies his early resolution of the collage process with the traditional technique of lithography. It was the first Dada work to be commissioned by a civil authority. As his acknowledged homage to de Chirico, Ernst assembled in the eight plates of Fiat modes images from his own new repertory of commonplace pictures and combined them with visual paraphrases from Picabia, Carlo Carrà, and de Chirico himself. Although Fiat modes was hailed in the spring 1920 issue of Baaargeld and Ernst's Dada periodical Die Schammade, it was a marketing failure. Supposedly published in an edition of sixty, the blatantly anti-bourgeois Fiat modes found few buyers among either the customary collectors of original prints or the far fewer supporters of Dada activities. According to Spies/Leppien, Ernst later destroyed most of the edition, so that today complete portfolios are extremely rare