The chasm between Bermuda’s image as a refuge of calm — or a place of supernatural menace — goes on display this month at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.

The show combines balmy scenes of flowers and pink beaches with the calamitous imagery drawn from such myths as the Bermuda Triangle, and the Island’s early reputation as an abode of devils.

“We’ve always wanted to do a show like this,” said museum founder Tom Butterfield of the upcoming “Mythology, Mayhem, Mystery and Marketing Exhibit”.

The free-ranging show will mix depictions of Bermuda in films such as the 1962 comedy “That Touch of Mink”, and the critically panned “Chapter Two” from 1979.

A vintage Pan-American Airlines travel poster of a mermaid adorned with an Easter Lily seems “calm and peaceful beyond belief”, Mr Butterfield said, while symbols of the Bermuda Triangle range from the sinister to the strange.

“We have a piece of glass from a pinball machine with ‘Bermuda Triangle’ on it — and it has tanks at war, which doesn’t make any sense,” Mr Butterfield laughed.

The 19th century US landscape painter Winslow Homer, a regular visitor to the Island, emerges as “our first public relations man who didn’t get paid”, he said: Homer’s colourful depictions of Bermuda drew other overseas artists to come here. Meanwhile, cubist art presents “the mayhem that movement caused when it came into the world”.

Juxtaposing differing imagery will allow visitors to form their own conclusions about “the wild side of Bermuda’s vexed identity”, said Mr Butterfield.

Part of the inspiration for the show came from an ad for a car that attempted — and failed — to capitalise on Bermuda’s image as a luxury destination.

“I discovered some months ago that there was a car made in the US by the Ford motor company, called the Edsel Bermuda,” Mr Butterfield said.

“It would never have been able to fit on Bermuda’s roads; it was the wrong size. They called it that because Bermuda was seen as a country club environment full of well-dressed people. They didn’t make many of them, just a couple of thousand, because it was a giant flop. I’d love to get hold of one, but finding one is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

The exhibition is set to run from October 11 until January 28, 2015.