Beyond the one thousand and one nights
Stories of Orientalisms
Containing some 300 masterpieces, the Beyond the One Thousand and One Nights exhibition invites visitors on a voyage through time to discover how forms, knowledge and imagined settings circulate and are transformed. The exhibition explores the multiple lives of artworks – the fates of objects since their creation, their travels and their reinterpretations – questioning how narratives are built, transform and are transferred.
In the early 18th century, Antoine Galland published a French version of One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of tales from Indian and Persian traditions, first compiled in Arabic in the 9th century. Recounted by the figure of Scheherazade, these stories, shaped by centuries of rewriting, reveal an imaginary world where the tale becomes a space for survival, invention and transmission. Their success in Europe had a profound impact on portrayals of the Orient, demonstrating a desire for new horizons and acting as a mirror held up to the societies that adopted them.
But the story did not begin with Galland, nor did it start in the 18th century. From the Middle Ages, commercial, diplomatic and cultural exchanges caused objects, motifs and knowledge to circulate around the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond. Textiles and precious objects were conserved in church treasuries and royal or princely collections, and were sometimes reused and transformed. Science, arts and literature from the Islamic world were well known, integrated and discussed. The Orient did not appear as a homogeneous or inert space, but as a multifaceted and shifting reality that was defined differently depending on the era and context.
The Beyond the One Thousand and One Nights exhibition explores the fate of objects through a long-term perspective. Collected, admired, reinterpreted but sometimes poorly understood, they bear witness to their various uses, the moves they underwent and the attitudes that accompanied them. This exhibition brings together major artworks from the Islamic Arts in the Louvre, making the most of the department’s temporary closure during its redesign, and is further expanded through exceptional loans from French and Belgian collections. With a chronological and critical approach, the exhibition traces the cultural exchanges between the Orient and the Occident, from the Middle Ages until today, through a French lens. From Paris to Isfahan, from the Alhambra to Cairo, from Constantinople to Venice and Algiers, it takes visitors on a journey through time and space, where objects, imagined settings, humans and history cross paths.
The visit is divided into different sections: From the 8th century, objects originating from the Orient, seen as precious and miraculous, circulated throughout Europe and enhanced church treasuries and royal collections. The legend of the exchanges between Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid illustrate the prestige of these objects. From the 13th century, and especially the 16th century onwards, trade across the Mediterranean intensified the transfer of objects and skills, while diplomatic exchanges and a fascination with the Ottoman Empire fed the European fashion for Turqueries and imagined worlds. The Orient inspired artists, authors and musicians from Molière to Rameau, as did the translated and adapted One Thousand and One Nights. Historical and imaginary accounts were created around iconic artworks such as the “Baptistery of St Louis”. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scholars travelled to the Alhambra and Cairo, revealing little known cultural heritages, and inspiring Alhambra-ism in 19th century music and artistic creation. From Ingres to Delacroix and Gérôme to Matisse, not to mention the collectors Goupil and Delort de Gléon, whose collections have been recreated here, idealised and collected objects were reinterpreted in painting and interior decorations. The Paris Expositions popularised these often stereotyped images, while museums accorded a hierarchy to the arts. Today, the same museums are now examining these stories of Orientalisms.
Throughout the chronological visit of the exhibition, contemporary counterpoints further reflection: living artists – Abbas Akbari, Kader Attia, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, Nezaket Ekici, Katia Kameli, Nicene Kossentini, Fatima Mazmouz, Sara Ouhaddou, Nazanin Pouyandeh, Zineb Sedira, Wael Shawky, Rayan Yasmineh, Nil Yalter and Amir Youssef – are revisiting these legacies and shifting attitudes, offering new readings that continue to structure and question the present.
Between the past, present and future, the exhibition invites visitors to think differently about how forms circulate and the way in which we look at artworks today. To return to the “One Thousand and One Nights” and to go “beyond” is to recognise that Orientalisms are stories. Like any story, they have been and can be transmitted, rewritten, modified, questioned, expanded, criticised and recreated. Like any story, they contain both light and dark elements. And like any story, the next stage in their history remains to be written, as demonstrated by the views of contemporary artists.
Exhibition curators:
Gwenaëlle Fellinger, curator, Department of Islamic Arts, Louvre Museum
Souraya Noujaim, director, Department of Islamic Arts, Louvre Museum
Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens
Assisted by Marie Gord, head of research at the Louvre-Lens
Scenography:
Philippine Ordinaire, artistic director, with Mathis Boucher, architect-scenographer at the Louvre-Lens
