Entropa - Reaction - Authorship Controversy

Authorship Controversy

On 13 January 2009, the authorship of Entropa came into question. Officially, the artwork was to have been an international collaboration between David Černý and artists from the other 26 EU countries. However, on that day, Alexandr Vondra announced the work was probably created by a smaller group of people, explaining that Černý did not inform him about this until the evening before. The original news article in Lidové noviny pointed out that some of the artists' names did not seem to exist in their countries' citizen records and had no Internet footprint. Černý himself admitted on 13 January that the artists' names had been fabricated.

The official booklet provided summaries of past expositions for most of the alleged authors, some of which matched those of known artists. For example, Austria's "Sabrina Unterberger" had a résumé that apparently belonged to Ernst Logar. Many of these "artists" had their own websites (designed by Tomáš Pospiszyl, Krištof Kintera and Libor Svoboda), but the contact information listed was false (other than the e-mail addresses, which were functional).

Lidové noviny originally listed Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, and the UK as countries for which fictitious artists' identities were given. These specific claims were later retracted and replaced by general charges that some of the names in the booklet are non-existent, their résumés erroneous, or that the artists denied knowing David Černý or having cooperated with him.

On the evening of 13 January 2009, Černý officially admitted that the piece was actually created entirely by him and two friends, and that all the officially supplied artists' identities had been fabricated. In a prepared statement, Černý offered an apology to Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, and the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg "and their offices" for deceiving them, stating he did not want them to be responsible for his fabulations. The statement went on to point out: "We knew the truth would come out. But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself."

The names of Černý's collaborators were given as Tomáš Pospiszyl and Krištof Kintera. The authors maintained that a larger international team of people was involved in the project's execution. They explained that they originally wanted to contact artists from all 27 member countries of the EU, but failed due to limited time and financing. Alexandr Vondra responded with an official statement expressing his disappointment and stressed that Černý would bear responsibility for deceiving the government.

Due to the sculpture's potential for controversy, the point that each country's piece was designed by an artist from that country was strongly stressed by the Czech government. According to Lidové noviny, Czech Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra remarked: "The fact remains that we have provided a platform for free artistic expression and that is how Entropa must be viewed. But, had I known the circumstances were different than we had thought for a year and a half, I would not have authorized it." Vondra attempted to distance the Czech government from Černý's work early on, saying,

It is a piece of art—nothing else... If Europe is not strong enough to look at this, it would be a tragedy. It is Europe through the eyes of 27 artists. It is not Europe through the eyes of the Czech presidency.