Founding Myths: From Hercules to Darth Vader

Overview

Presented in the Petite Galerie throughout the school year, the exhibition “Founding Myths” tells how illustrators, sculptors, painters, puppeteers, filmmakers, and musicians around the world have drawn inspiration from myths, given them form, and brought them to life.

What is a myth? And how are myths portrayed? How are they passed on to us? How have artists appropriated them? Told, sung, written, and illustrated, myths are a part of all cultures and civilizations, including contemporary popular culture.

The exhibition displays some 70 artworks, grouped into four sections. The first gallery invites you to discover the tales told by different civilizations in an effort to explain the creation of the world. Then find out how the cycles of nature are recounted in Greek, Egyptian, and Islamic civilizations. Meet mythological heroes such as Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Hercules, and Icarus, and see how they have been portrayed by classical and contemporary artists. In the final gallery, ponder modern-day interpretations of myths and metamorphoses: from Jean Cocteau to Star Wars, Japanese manga to Fantômas, do the mythologies of popular culture not still draw from the same repertoire of stories and tales?

Organised by

Dominique de Font-Réaulx, musée national Eugène-Delacroix.

Project manager

Frédérique Leseur, musée du Louvre.