A show of outlandish sculptures by a cult Japanese artist in the historic Chateau of Versailles, near Paris, has enraged traditionalists, who say it dishonours France's past.

From September 14 to December 12, visitors to Versailles will see alongside the chateau's ornate murals and chandeliers eye-grabbing multicoloured statues in silver, fibreglass and metal by Takashi Murakami.

"The Chateau de Versailles is one of the greatest symbols of Western history," Murakami said on the museum's website.

"The Versailles of my imagination ... has become a completely separate and unreal world," he said. "That is what I have tried to depict in this exhibition."

Versailles enthusiasts, however, branded it an outrage to their beloved museum.

"Murakami and company have no business in the Chateau of Versailles!" reads a message on the website Versailles Mon Amour, dedicated to a petition that, it says, has gained more than 3500 signatures.

"The chateau is not a billboard but one of the symbols of our history and our culture."

The organisers of the site said a "playful" demonstration was planned at the chateau on the day of the exhibition's opening.

King Louis XVI was driven from the chateau by revolutionaries in 1789 and guillotined four years later. Louis XIV had set up his court there in the 17th century. The royal apartments are the site of the new exhibition.

The museum's director, former culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon, said the protests "come from far-right fundamentalist circles and from very conservative groups".

Such groups see Versailles as "a reliquary of nostalgia for ancien regime [pre-revolution] France; of a France that is turned in on itself and hostile to modernity," Aillagon said.

Murakami has a global cult following but his brash, colourful style and sometimes gleefully obscene subject matter are not to everyone's taste.

The 47-year-old artist's work evokes the look of "manga" comic books, perhaps most famously in the 1997 statue Hiropon, which depicts a large-chested girl skipping over a "rope" of spurting breast milk.

In another sculpture, "My Lonesome Cowboy", a naked young man finds a novel use for his own semen.

These two works are not part of the Versailles exhibition, but Anne Brassie, a local literary critic who launched the petition, cited them as showing that Murakami was not worthy to have his work displayed in Versailles.

"The young man with an erect penis whose sperm forms a lasso, the little woman with big breasts whose milk forms a skipping rope - these have no place in the royal apartments," she said.

Another patriotic cultural group, Versailles Defence Co-ordination, has also launched a petition, which it said has gained more than 4000 signatures. Its leader said the exhibition was "illegal".

Aillagon said the works on exhibition "were chosen carefully so that they could be seen by everyone". They include Oval Buddha Silver, a meditating silver figure with a huge globular head, and the multicoloured psychedelic sculpture Flower Matango.

The Murakami show is one in a series of contemporary art exhibitions launched by Aillagon at the chateau. The first such show, in 2008, with bright and bizarre sculptures by the US artist Jeff Koons, also angered traditionalists.

Aillagon said the series "aims to give visitors to historic monuments the chance to discover art that is less familiar, and to get those who want to see Takashi Murakami or Jeff Koons to come to the chateau, which they wouldn't otherwise do".