THE RESPONSE by Lars Vilks to yesterday’s Irish-based threat to his life was typically sardonic; “The barks of those roundabout dogs will never fall silent,” he said, referring to the provocative sketches he penned back in 2007 and the controversy that has rumbled on since then.
Vilks (64), a Swedish art historian and erstwhile professor, can best be described as an ageing enfant terrible. As a conceptual artist, he has spent decades poking fun at the establishment.
Those incendiary sketches that morphed the head of the Prophet Mohammed on to the body of a dog in 2007 were a natural move for an artist who courts controversy with the same ease as the rest of us draw breath.
His most famous work is a series of oversized driftwood sculptures placed outdoors in the Kullaberg nature reserve in the southern Swedish county of Skåne. Having neglected to apply for planning permission, Vilks has spent the last 30 years doing legal battle with a multitude of regional and national authorities.
Besides the sculptures themselves, the most visible upshot has been his proclamation establishing an independent statelet in the Kullaberg wilderness.
Ladonia, as he calls it, claims 10,000 citizens (although it rejected 4,000 applications from Pakistan some years ago), and Vilks’s antics on its behalf have included declaring war on San Marino. The record does not show whether San Marino noticed.
Jokes aside, the headline on his imaginary statelet’s home page gives a valuable insight into Vilks’s character – “Ladonia, Proud, Free and Interactive”, it says, mirroring his conviction that freedom of expression is inalienable.
“Why should Islam be spared criticism which is taken for given in Judaism and Christianity?” he asked Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in a 2007 interview when the dog-picture controversy first exploded. “Above all, this is about how Swedish Muslims can handle this and whether they have the maturity to act democratically.”
Looking back, this focus on the reaction of the local Muslim population reveals just how much Vilks (like the Danish cartoonists before him) underestimated the global ramifications of his provocation.
Säpo, Sweden’s secret police, informed the artist a month ago of a “heightened risk level”.
Lately, Vilks had received threatening phone calls, subsequently traced to Somalia.
Defiant last night in the Swedish wilderness, Vilks said he wasn’t afraid, “but I’ve got myself an axe in case anybody breaks in through the window”.