Austria to pull Chirac-Queen-Bush sex posters

Reuters
Thu Dec 29, 2005

The sponsors of spoof posters depicting the Queen having sex with the U.S. and French presidents have decided to remove them from Vienna's streets to quiet an outcry ahead of Austria's EU presidency, APA news agency said on Thursday.

The images on electronic rolling billboards showed two naked female models wearing masks of President George W. Bush and the Queen, and a male model with a President Jacques Chirac mask, positioned as if engaged in a sex act.

APA, the Austrian news agency, said the project's organisers together with artists Carlos Aires from Spain and Tanja Ostojic from Serbia opted to pull the images after a public furore that embarrassed the Vienna government.

Part of a series of 150 images called "euroPART", the posters were meant to "reflect on the different social, historical and political developments in Europe", said art project 25peaces, which commissioned the posters.

APA quoted Aires and Ostojic, who created an image of a woman sprawled in knickers emblazoned with the EU circle of stars emblem, as saying they felt it was better that their works should not divert attention from all the others.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel had appealed to the artists to withdraw the posters after opposition leaders and the media protested that they demeaned women and damaged the reputation of Austria as it prepares to take over the EU presidency on January 1.

"We regret this development that totally distorted the image of the entire project," 25 peaces said in a statement quoted by APA.

25peaces received 1 million euros (687 thousand pounds) of public funding for the works. Only three of the 150 images displayed on hundreds of billboards in prominent places across the Austrian capital had sexual overtones.

The poster series is to be shown until the end of January.