Danish artists' exhibition cancelled over royal orgy cartoon

A retrospective of artist duo Surrend has been scrapped because of a poster depicting the Danish royal family having sex
By Clemens Bomsdorf | Web only
Published online 18 Oct 10 (News)


COPENHAGEN. A cartoon depicting the Danish royal family taking part in an orgy has led to the cancellation of a retrospective of works by satirical Danish artist duo Surrend (consisting of Jan Egesborg and Pia Bertelsen). “These people just want to attract attention, nothing else,” said Thomas Bloch Ravn, the director of Den Gamle By in Aarhus, Denmark's second city. “It turned out that I cannot trust them and therefore I decided it's better not to collaborate with them.”

The show was due to open in the Danish Poster Museum, part of Den Gamle By, on 13 October. “We agreed on a retrospective exhibition, but when Surrend announced it was including a totally new poster depicting the Danish royals in a pornographic scene, that was against our agreement,” Ravn said. “This is a clear case of censorship”, said Egesborg. “Denmark pretends to encourage freedom of speech and argues for publishing a cartoon hurting millions of Muslims, but when it comes to its own royalty it's a different story.”

Ravn denied censorship and said: “In the same way that the editor-in-chief decides what is published in a newspaper, the head of a museum has the last saying regarding works in an exhibition. They are free to publish their work elsewhere.” Peder Stougaard, the head of the Danish Poster Museum, said he disagreed with the show's cancellation, although he would not have displayed the royal family image.

The Surrend artists are astonished that neither Kurt Westergaard, whose famous cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban that looked like bomb was published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, nor Flemming Rose, the editor who commissioned it, nor the Danish Free Press Society have publicly protested against the exhibition's cancellation.

Lars Hedegaard, the president of the Free Press Society, told The Art Newspaper that he sees the cancellation is an “overreaction, but not censorship”. The Danish Association of Visual Artists is backing Surrend, while the Association of Specialised Museums in Denmark said it supports Den Gamle By's decision.

Surrend is known for its fake posters and advertisements. Under the name of “Danes for World Peace” it booked an advertisement in the Tehran Times that included a portrait of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The first letters of each line of the text spelled the word “swine”. Surrend have also displayed posters in public showing decapitated Danish royalty next to a guillotine.