Berserk & Pyrrhia, art contemporain et art médiéval

Pop culture and the medieval :

The image of the legendary berserker warrior has inspired a multitude of offshoots in films, video games, manga and rap music. In many myths, the berserker is intricately linked to the earth, to animality, forging ahead without armour. In Kentarō Miura’s work, Guts becomes a berserker through his armour. The powerful drawings that bring the story of this manga to life are brimming with European medieval references, both direct and inspired by 19th-century medievalist masterpieces, with their dark, shadowy tones.

Pyrrhia is a butterfly that has given its name to an imaginary island, described in the series of books Wings of Fire (Tui T. Sutherland), where dragons with reason reign, devoid of humans, but where small beings walking on two legs with a tuft of hair on their heads, known as scavengers, can be found.
More specifically, this Pyrrhia umbra butterfly is also known as ‘The Chrysograph,’ the name of the writers who created the illuminations in the grimoires

Contemporary and medieval art :

This medieval heroic fantasy imagery of pop culture inhabits the worlds of today’s artists. The off-kilter vision of the humans that rule provides them with a different approach to the future. In the contemporary works on show at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, a return to the land, magical parables or straw huts, enchanted or evil humanised animals and insects, appear in turn as fantasies or fears in a world drowning in uncertainty. Not to be outdone, the apocalypse, a recurring motif in medieval art, and its monstrous or dreamlike bestiary are also represented. Love, friendship and social interaction are imbued with these ancient models, which have been transformed by the contemporary gaze. The joy of recycling and the DIY approach are also evident in the use of less polluting and more sustainable materials.

The Berserk & Pyrrhia* exhibition illustrates the influence of medieval images and their subsequent appropriation, as well as forging links between medieval art and contemporary art. Medieval works will be on display at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, thanks to loans from the region’s rich heritage collections**, while works by contemporary artists will, in turn, engage with medieval heritage by appearing in the region’s historic monuments, continuing this intergenerational and transhistorical dialogue.

A diptych between Le Plateau and Les Réserves :

In a diptych spanning Le Plateau and Les Réserves, the exhibition explores various forms of hybridisation. At Le Plateau, in the spirit of Berserk, and regarding the more mystical and romantic nineteenth-century interpretation of the medieval period, the works take us on an obscure and dark journey. At Les Réserves, their references are rooted in fantasy, anthropomorphic creatures and medieval bestiary, transporting us into the world of Pyrrhia and emphasising the importance of artisanship and links with the community.

Off-site :

Curator : Rémi Enguehard, in collaboration with the education department of the Frac Île-de-France, and the teams of the partner venues

A separate off-site programme draws on the dense web of ideas that make up the themes presented at the Frac :

Rethinking the relationship with nature and the non-human through the revival of medieval bestiary
valuing or rediscovering pre-modern knowledge and production methods, with an autonomy of production
Rethinking social relations concerning the community
Exploring the future of our world and our imaginations in the context of apocalypse and the marvellous
Analysing the flow of images between contemporary pop culture, medieval sources and reinterpretations across the centuries, particularly in the 19th century.

Exhibition produced in collaboration with Musée de Cluny – musée national du Moyen Âge

*The title refers to the manga Berserk by Kentarō Miura and the Wings of Fire books by Tui T. Sutherland.

** Loans from Ile-de-France heritage collections

ARCHÉA collection, Louvres, 95.
Collection du département d’histoire de l’architecture et de l’archéologie de la Ville de Paris, 75.
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Melun collection, 77.
Musée Bossuet collection, Cité épiscopale de Meaux, 77
Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris collection, 75
Departmental collections of Musée archéologique du Val d’Oise, Guiry-en-Vexin, 95.

• Nils Alix-Tabeling, Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Jacopo Belloni, Bernard Berthois-Rigal, Camille Bernard, Peter Briggs, Aëla Maï Cabel, Rose-Mahé Cabel, L. Camus-Govoroff, Pascal Convert, Mélanie Courtinat, Parvine Curie, Neïla Czermak Ichti, Corentin Darré, Caroline Delieutraz, Mimosa Echard, Frederik Exner, Héloïse Farago, Teresa Fernandez-Pello, Alison Flora, Lucia Hadjam, Laurent Jardin-Dragovan, Nicolas Kennett, Agathe Labaye & Florian Sumi, Lou Le Forban, Liz Magor, Pauline Marx, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, Philippe Mohlitz, Raphaël Moreira Gonçalves, Léo Penven, Théophile Peris, Jérémy Piningre, Agnes Scherer, Cecil Serres, François Stahly, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gérard Trignac, Clémence van Lunen, Xolo Cuintle et Radouan Zeghidour