The publication in « Bizarre », which will not happen again, nevertheless amounts to affiliation. Topor turns to the press, humorous drawings and satirical cartoons, particularly for the magazine « Hara Kiri ». In 1961, his meeting with two other exiles, the Spanish Fernando Arrabal, and the Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky, with whom he is going to create his own group, Panique, is a turning point for him. Panique is not a closed group, but rather a circle of friends, with a variable configuration and no structure [4] : it is not a slogan, but rather a password, like the Collège of pataphysique [5] ; an entity with skillfully blurred contours, but whose members will claim their membership all their life. Since it has never really existed, they say, there is no reason to disband it.

In 1965 and 1966, several performances of the group Panique, orchestrated by Arrabal, Jodorowsky and Topor are shown at the Festival de la Libre Expression, organized by the artist, Jean-Jacques Lebel, at the American Center, rue de Bercy, in Paris. Topor’s performance, in 1965, is entitled “ Cérémonie pour une nouvelle femme” [6] (Ceremony for a new woman): actors in bowler hats handle cardboard objects. Topor made masks, costumes and large drawings stuck on wooden figures, which interacted with the actors. A dancer did a striptease around a giant plaster breast before it was trampled and thrown off the stage. Opening his thighs, a hooded monk pourred the content of an aquarium over her crotch, etc.

With these performances, Topor is on the verge of the contemporary art world. He shares the poster for the Festival de la Nouvelle expression (the Festival of the New Expression) with Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman; he frequently sees Daniel Spoerri and illustrates his book, « An Anecdoted Topography of Chance », published by Emmett Williams for his publishing house Fluxus Something Else Press in 1966. Through Spoerri, Topor meets Robert Filliou and Erik Dietman, but above all friendship guided these encounters, while he is on the sidelines of the art world, toward which he is most suspicious: “Most of the time artists are said to be producers of luxury products (…). I decline prestige, because I do not think it is so much more noble and prestigious to work and trade in art than to make and sell shoes or prepare meals, or go through garbage. (…) I do not say that out of demagogy. It is the product side, the object to be had that makes me uncomfortable. Many art works are not necessarily very novel or inventive. (…) On the whole they only are the insidious instruments of power, because they reinforce it in the stupidest way.” [7]

[4] No real list of Panique’s members has ever been drawn up. In addition to Topor, Arrabal and Jodorowsky, those who have been members include Olivier O. Olivier, Diego Bardon, Sam Szafran, Michel Troche, Jacques Sternberg, Abel Ogier, Dominique Sevrain, André Ruellan, Christian Zeimert, Jérôme Savary, Kazik Hentchel, Zwy Milstein, Yojiro Otsuki, Heidi Draper, Michel Parré, Freddy de Vries, Bob Swain, Copi, Jean Benoit, Mimi Parent, as well as graphic designer Roman Ciezlewicz, editor of « Kamikaze, a panic news magazine » whose first issue, was published by Christian Bourgeois in 1976.

[5] Topor n’a été nommé Satrape du Collège de ‘pataphysique qu’à titre posthume, en 2001.
[6] The performance was recorded and broadcast on television in « Happening », a report directed by Jean-Pierre Mirouze, aired on January 1, 1965.
[7] Roland Topor, Courts termes, en aparté avec Eddy Devolder, Creil, Dumerchez, 1994, p.18

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His « Mémoires d’un vieux con » (the Memoirs of a schmuck) is a fictionalized autobiography of his life as an artist, in which he ridicules the image of the artist and the conventions of the art world: “My remarkable gifts for plastic arts appeared from my earliest days. I already showed an exceptional talent. Three years old, I was carving Klee sketches with my fork into mashed potatoes, to my family’s amazement…” [8]

To a consistent precise artistic line, Topor preferred to multiply the fields of expression, often on commission, working for the press, cinema and television. In 1978 he even accepted a commission from the CNPF (National council of French employers), before it became the Medef (National confederation of French employers), for a short-length animation film about the business world. But after a few drawings depicting the factory as a greedy animal devouring human beings, the commission was cancelled. The spirit of « Hara Kiri » lives on in the conclusion of his « Mémoires d’un vieux con », taking the form of an apology of opportunism: “Long live money! Long live avant-garde! Long live communism!” [9]

Topor has developed a rejection of “modern art” based on a legitimizing discourse and distinction, meant for the pacified world of museums. He prefers a popular approach to art, which causes laughter and shock, as so many devaluations of the “grand art”. Jacques Sternberg, in his preface to Topor’s first collection of drawings, « Les Masochistes », did not fail to point it out : “to go so far in the lack of measure and good taste, when good manners are the key to success and intellectual esteem. Monsieur Topor, I do tell you, you must seriously detoporise yourself if you want to get somewhere, to succeed, as they say.”

François Piron