Huis mi-clos is a small collection of wordless erotic cartoons, the only explicit album ever created by Moïse Depond. The title is a playful corruption of the French expression ‘huis clos’, meaning behind closed doors or in private. By substituting ‘mi-clos’, meaning half-closed, he introduces the idea that privacy is never quite what it seems. The illustrated title page makes the joke explicit, with tiny eyes replacing the dots above the letters i, while the accompanying drawing presents a naked man whose mirror reflects a giant eye.

The album is characterised by the visual absurdity and irreverent wit that distinguish Mose’s wider work. Here nudity and sex are a means of exposing human vanity, embarrassment and physical incongruity. The resulting humour depends on the unexpected reversal and the visual pun.

Produced in a limited edition of 250 numbered copies, the album was issued anonymously, without a named publisher, and circulated in the clandestine world of post-war French illustrated curiosa. Although Depond later occasionally incorporated sexual innuendo into his mainstream cartoons, Huis mi-clos is a rare early excursion into sexual humour.

Depond hand-coloured some of the cartoons, and where we have these they are included after the monochrome versions.