AARHUS, Denmark -- Kurt Westergaard is in hiding from Islamic militants who want him dead. Now, the Danish cartoonist says he’s ready to part with the source of his travails, a small ink sketch of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
But first there is the ticklish question of price.
“I would like to think that it has some value,” says Mr. Westergaard, the 72-year-old creator of one of the world’s most famous cartoons and one that inflamed Muslims world-wide. “It is a symbol of democracy and freedom of expression. I think I should have a little money for this,” he says.
The drawing is locked in a bank vault while the cartoonist shuttles between temporary havens the Danish secret police have found for him around this blustery port city. His is by far the best known of 12 Muhammad-related cartoons published in September 2005 by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. But how do you fix the value of something that auction houses won’t touch, that museums won’t hang on their walls and that still inspires murderous passions?
Two weeks ago, Danish authorities said they had foiled a plot to kill Mr. Westergaard in his home. Seventeen Danish newspapers, outraged and eager to show solidarity, reprinted his drawing. Muslims again took to the streets. Iran and others demanded an apology. “I always had a feeling this cartoon crisis would not end,” says Mr. Westergaard. “Now I know.”
Yet the new round of trouble may only increase the cartoon’s worth eventually. “Things gain value from public interest and history,” notes Sebastian Lerche, a director of Denmark’s biggest auction house, Bruun Rasmussen. He is quick to add he has no interest in testing the market: “We see no point in offending millions of people,” he says.
Some Muslims here want the bomb-in-a-turban drawing destroyed. Salah Suleiman, an activist in a mosque that helped whip up the fury over it in early 2006, delights in the artist’s troubles and says no amount of money can save him from God’s wrath: “He is living like a rat.... He is living in hell already.”
Mr. Westergaard’s wife, a retired kindergarten teacher, has also suggested destruction, by selling the cartoon to a wealthy Arab who “can then burn it in the central square in Mecca.” Mr. Westergaard says he likes the idea of getting money from an oil sheik but would prefer the cartoon stay intact and in Denmark.
Mr. Westergaard says he never intended his drawing to rile Muslims, only to mock extremists who push a deformed reading of their faith. But while arguments rage over whether his cartoon is intolerably offensive or an emblem of free speech, there’s no doubt of the prominence it has achieved. Though shunned by most major U.S. publications, it has been reprinted widely in Europe, plastered across the Internet and put on T-shirts. (See the drawing.)
Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Danish paper that first ran the cartoon, compares it to a famous photo of Che Guevara in a beret and to Andy Warhol’s pop-art portrait of Marilyn Monroe. “It is a great cultural icon of the 21st century,” he says.
Mr. Rose thinks the cartoonist is right to expect compensation beyond the $150 or so he got from his newspaper and about $800 more in Danish reprint fees. It’s like a “super hit in the music industry,” the editor says: “If you create a hit you get paid.”
The Front-Runner
So far, though, the front-runner to acquire this and other Muhammad cartoons is Denmark’s Royal Library, which would like to get them free. The library takes no view of the merits of the cartoons and wouldn’t put them on display anytime soon. But the institution, whose holdings range from manuscripts of Hans Christian Andersen and Soren Kierkegaard to Scandinavian porn, says it has an obligation to try to acquire items of significance for future generations.
The library says it’s in talks with Denmark’s Cartoonists Association about acquiring the drawings. The library might be able to get some money for payment, but “this is not the time for big checks,” says a spokeswoman, Jytte Kjaergaard, adding that the library won’t get into a bidding contest with “capitalist sharks.”
Mr. Lerche, the auctioneer, says it’s “pure guesswork” what Mr. Westergaard’s drawing is worth. A less-famed Muhammad cartoon sold for around $2,900 in an Internet auction, but that was in late 2005, before the global uproar. The artist in that case donated the cash, which came from an anonymous buyer, to earthquake relief in Pakistan.
In an event last year at the Reagan Library in California, Mr. Rose, the Danish culture editor, saw the cartoons’ selling power. He autographed posters featuring his newspaper’s original cartoon edition, which sold out in minutes for $1,000 apiece.
Money has played a role on the other side of the barricades, too. When Muslims started burning Danish flags and ransacking Danish property in early 2006, extremists joined in a bidding war to get Mr. Westergaard killed. The bounties they offered ranged from a new car to a million dollars.
The cartoonist continued going to work at his small newspaper office, piled with old papers and empty coffee cups. But last November, the danger became real. Denmark’s security service uncovered a group it said had diagrams of Mr. Westergaard’s house and apparently planned to slit his throat as he slept.
The service offered to send him and his wife on a Caribbean cruise. He declined. “I’m an old man with a stiff neck. I can’t bow my head to anyone,” he says. Police offered a guard dog. His wife didn’t like the idea.
The police moved the couple to a safe place, and agents took over their house in hopes of catching the plotters. When no attack came, police picked up the alleged conspirators, two Tunisians and a Moroccan-born Danish national. The two who aren’t Danish citizens are to be deported.
Security Risk
Mr. Westergaard is still in hiding, though he isn’t difficult to spot: He wears bright red trousers, red socks and a red scarf. A hotel where he had taken refuge judged him a security risk and demanded he check out.
He hasn’t set a price for the drawing that caused all this grief. He says his aim isn’t to get rich but to gain recognition for his work and generate a bit of cash for his children and grandchildren.
He has tried to protect his intellectual property, but without much success. Aided by his brother-in-law, a lawyer, he went after an outfit in Holland hawking clothing adorned with his drawing, but the owner vanished. Attempts to find a copyright violator in Germany also fizzled.
“I suppose this is capitalism,” he sighs. “You create something and then others exploit it.”
The cartoon that now may have him on the run for life is one that Mr. Westergaard, in 2005, did in an hour. “It was just another day at the office,” he says.
Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com