The French phrase ‘Vous avez dit bizarre?’ comes from the 1942 French film Drôle de Drame, directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert. In the film the character l’Évêque Soper, played by Louis Jouvet, says ‘Bizarre? Bizarre? Vous avez dit bizarre? Comme c’est étrange’. (‘Bizarre? Bizarre? Did you say bizarre? How strange.’) The line quickly became iconic in French pop culture, often quoted and parodied due to its rhythm and repetition. Over time it took on a life of its own and is now widely recognised as a humorous or ironic way to comment on something unusual or unexpected.

And Alain Bonnand’s 1991 collection of drawings is certainly bizarre, with its juxtaposition of sexual imagery and surrealist treatment. The mixture of images is itself quite bizarre, sometimes succeeding in producing a true flash of surrealist insight and sometimes descending into something quite close to gratuitous misogyny. What cannot be denied is his talent for pencil drawing, and the breadth of his imagination.

In addition to the drawings included in Vous avez dit bizarre, published by the Club du Livre Secret, we have also added several other Bonnand works from the same period.