What connects Game of Thrones, the epic fantasy TV series set in a world of medieval legends, and French singer-songwriter Mylène Farmer’s latest concert tour Nevermore, with its dark stage sets inspired by a gothic cathedral? What does the global success of the role-playing game World of Warcraft signify? One thing is clear: The medieval world, whether historical or reimagined, is undeniably in vogue.

‘When we presented “The Lady and the Unicorn – Medieval and Yet So Contemporary” in 2021, many were surprised. In retrospect, I believe we were rather ahead of our time!’ declares Annabelle Ténèze, former director of Les Abattoirs in Toulouse. ‘In my view, the current fascination with this period is directly linked to contemporary questions. The Middle Ages offer a different perspective on nature and living beings,’ she explains. ‘There’s also a reflection on artistic work, with craftsmanship and guilds. This extends to women’s roles, as widows at that time could inherit workshops.’ The curator, now heading the Louvre-Lens, is preparing the second installment of her investigations with ‘Gothic’ (working title), which opens in September. This transhistorical fresco will examine one of the first movements of globalization, highlighting key moments such as the success of neo-Gothic architecture and its countercultural longevity.

The Middle Ages, once perceived as dark, violent, and barbaric, have transformed into a fertile source of inspiration – as brilliantly demonstrated by the great diversity of contemporary practices drawing from this transitional era.

For Zuzanna Czebatul, technique is political. The Berlin-based Polish artist made her name through collapsed, fragmented, and even deflated sculptures. These works disrupt the iconology of Western hegemonic power, whether religious, feudal, monarchical, or national. In 2023, the thirty-something artist initiated a new series of works centered on tapestry, a novel medium for someone who had previously experimented with trompe-l’œil antique marble. For her exhibition ‘The Lunatic Fringe’ at sans titre gallery in Paris in 2023, the artist presented a collection of textile wall works. She isolated enlarged details from ceremonial tapestries dating from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, such as voluptuous draperies from which a foot or shoe occasionally emerged. Czebatul perceives in these a symbol of mobility and migration, revealing how the reception of these emblems of power is subject to reassessment.

Laurent Grasso fractures millennial atmospheres in which the end seems imminent. Double suns, black stars, and spheres of fire: human senses struggle to decode the paranormal signals of a universe gone mad. Since the 2000s, the French artist has created installations blending painting, video, architecture, sound, curious objects, and historical painting. His parallel realities, which he describes as ‘false historical memory,’ provide access to a suspended universe where wonder has paranoia as its flip side. Since 2009, the fifty-year-old artist has been working on one of his most celebrated series, ‘Studies into the Past’ – anachronistic oil paintings in which scenes inspired by the early Middle Ages and the Renaissance are disrupted by inexplicable meteorological phenomena. Last year, Grasso produced the first tapestry of the series: a nocturnal scene depicting two knights transfixed by the sudden appearance of an opaque mass. The work is the product of virtuosic collective labor, created from the artist’s cartoon by weavers at the Manufacture Robert Four in Aubusson.

The medieval imaginary fuels both anxiety and promises of regeneration in the face of uncertainty. In this regard, Theodora Allen is one of the most eminent representatives of a contemplative, enchanted medievalism. Born in 1985 in Los Angeles, the artist paints ethereal compositions dotted with moons, weeds, and heraldic symbols. Her diaphanous oils on linen employ a restricted palette of blue, gray, and white tones, evoking the starry skies of medieval manuscript illuminations, and reminiscent of the pastoral scenes in the book of hours Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412–1416). To nourish her distinctive language, the artist has assembled a personal pantheon: illumination meets Hilma af Klint, William Blake, Symbolism, and 1960s Californian psychedelia. Allen demonstrates that opposites can coexist, and everything is destined for regeneration.

In 2021, Thomas Golsenne and Clovis Maillet published Un Moyen Âge émancipateur [An Emancipatory Middle Ages] with Même pas l’hiver. It is a work born from their observations in Francophone art and design schools. The art historian and artist-researcher emphasized how this imaginary is composite, delving into the past to better illuminate the future. Such joyful syncretism can be found in the work of Kasper Bosmans, a polymath artist whose folkloric universe is populated with fantastic animals, bearded women, and drag queen saints. The artist combines different oral sources and vernacular traditions within vast panoramas of playful geometry. A year ago, the Belgian artist, born in 1990, transformed the spaces of Mendes Wood DM in Paris for ‘Plums, Under Cover’, the French public’s introduction to his flamboyant Queer, ecological, and anti-speciesist counter history.

At the end of March, another exhibition dedicated to medievalism will open: ‘Berserk & Pyrrhia: Contemporary and Medieval Art’. Organized by the Frac Île-de-France, it will take place at both Le Plateau in Paris and Les Réserves in Romainville. But in the face of such enthusiasm, can the medieval imaginary endure beyond the passing trend? Artist Cathy de Monchaux has never ceased exploring fantastic woodlands and Gothic dramas. Beginning in the 1980s, the British sculptor created her first works of organic sensuality where sex, danger, and death celebrate the alliance of opposites by merging velvet, steel, ribbons, and bolts within small objects resembling relics. Her subsequent production evolved toward monumental scale and Gothic ornamental saturation, leading to the artist’s current variations on the unicorn theme. This marvelous motif translates the unconscious of an era which, according to historian Jacques Le Goff in The Medieval Imagination (1985), knew, more than any other, how to believe in hidden realities.