Fantastic Animals

Dragon-Serpent of Ishtar Gate (detail; 1902), Walter Andrea. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Photo: © BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Andres Kilger

Dragons, griffins, sphinxes, unicorns, phoenixes: present as early as Antiquity, fantastic animals inhabit the tiniest recesses of our contemporary world, from films and cartoons to everyday objects.
By turns images of terror or admiration, expressions of our hidden unconscious and our anxieties, these often hybrid creatures contain within them a fundamental ambiguity. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they mean?

Featuring more than 250 works – sculptures, paintings and objets d’art, as well as films and music – ranging from Antiquity to the present day, Fantastic Animals offers a journey through time and space, retracing the history of the most famous of these animals through their legends, their powers and their habitats. It explores our passionate relationships with these creatures whose unreal presence seems more than ever necessary.