Roland Topor achieved cult status for his macabre cartoons, novels, plays, film and television scripts, and performances. He first gained notoriety for his illustrations published in the subversive French magazine Hara-Kiri, the precursor to Charlie Hebdo, a publication known for its anti-religious discourse.

With dark, scatological humor, Topor depicted exaggerated versions of the things hidden from everyday life; his drawings, which depict absurd situations juxtaposing people, animals, plants, and objects, are associated with Surrealism. Works such as Disheveled Thoughts (1967), a black-and-white drawing of a woman slicing her brain like a block of cheese or butter, or his 1968 recasting of Cinderella as a nude woman holding a slipper that doubles as her genitals reflect his fascination with society’s neuroses and fantasies.

In 1962, with artists Fernando Arrabal and Alejandro Jodorowsky, Topor formed the Mouvement panique (“Panic Movement”), staging chaotic happenings involving actions like slitting the throats of geese or attaching snakes to their chests. Topor simultaneously wrote several novels, the most famous of which, Le Locataire Chimérique (“The Tenant”) (1964)—chronicling a man’s descent into paranoia—was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski.

Topor designed a nightmarish attraction for Luna Luna, which featured a façade covered in graphic, black-and-white illustrations of male characters making distorted faces. Inside, viewers were confronted with surreal scenes, including a man with a colony of worms sprouting from his face, accompanied by a soundtrack of mating whales.