Is it acceptable to read the French author Céline when you are aware that he was anti-Semitic?
What do you do when you know that an artist has committed morally reprehensible acts or held such thoughts? And how do you deal with this as an art teacher? Art historian Peter Guido de Boer reflects on this. "I don't read Céline despite his moral bankruptcy. I read him with that bankruptcy in the back of my mind."
The right position
When I discovered the anti-Semitic pamphlets written by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961), I wanted to close his novel. Moral clarity feels good. Just say: bad person, so away with the work. Problem solved.
But it didn't work that way. Céline is one of the most intriguing authors of the twentieth century, and his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night had already touched me. The cadence. The rawness. Those sentences were already under my skin. What was I supposed to do? Pretend that experience never happened? As if aesthetic disruption could be reversed with a moral eraser?
As a sparring partner for creative people, I see the same desire for clarity. The question always comes in a polite form: "But what is the right position?" As if art had a compliance protocol. We want art to be pure. Clean creators. Untainted biographies. But I think that desire is dangerous. Moreover, history does not cooperate.
Power in marble
Take the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571). In his autobiography, he unabashedly describes how he killed a man during a conflict. No rumor. No malicious gossip. His own proud words. Yet his Perseus still stands proudly in Florence. We admire the anatomy, the tension, the craftsmanship. No one puts a sign next to it saying: "Technically brilliant, morally problematic."
Or take the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome. That gleaming white building with rhythmic arches, also known as the "Square Colosseum." It was built between 1938 and 1943 on the orders of Benito Mussolini, leader of fascist Italy during World War II. The Palazzo is a monument to a world exhibition that never took place. An architectural statement that sought to connect modern Italy directly with imperial Rome. Sleek. Symmetrical. Monumental. Propaganda in travertine.
Yet fashion house Fendi is housed there. Creative directors walk through marble corridors. Exhibitions are held there. The building even features in the series Emily in Paris, as a stylish backdrop to contemporary glamour. The context shifts. The regime disappears. The stones remain. What do you do with such a building? Do you demolish it? Do you ignore it? Or do you acknowledge that beauty and ideology are often historically intertwined? Apparently, aesthetic power rarely arises in a sterile manner. That is problematic.
Historically flexible moral compass
I notice that I myself can also be selectively indignant. Is it a contemporary artist who is misbehaving? Then I feel a strong urge to immediately cancel them. But is it a Renaissance artist with blood on their hands? Then I think: well, those were different times. A fascist building that is now Instagram-worthy? Apparently, that's possible too.
When Russia invaded Ukraine and the Hermitage Amsterdam severed ties with St. Petersburg, it felt logical. Solidarity. Principle. But at the same time, I thought: what exactly can a Rembrandt painting do about Vladimir Putin's actions? Can paint bear geopolitical guilt?
We are constantly shifting boundaries. What was acceptable yesterday is reprehensible today. What is unthinkable today may be put into perspective tomorrow. That is not a weakness of culture. That is culture!
Delete or sand down?
In my discussions, I try not to smooth over that discomfort. When a participant says, "But then we should just stop showing the work, right?" I ask back, "And what does that solve?" Does it make the world morally clearer? Or just more orderly?
It is tempting to think that deleting a name from a curriculum will also erase the problem. But art is not a contaminated surface that can be disinfected. It is an archive of human contradiction. That does not mean that anything goes. It does mean that we must distinguish between celebrating and studying. Between uncritical admiration and critical reading.
Reading Céline with context is different from glorifying Céline. The same applies to admiring Cellini without romanticizing his violence. And for viewing the Palazzo without forgetting its origins. It is precisely in that gray area that something happens. That is where we must reflect and question ourselves. Why does this work affect me? What am I ignoring? What do I weigh more heavily: aesthetic power or moral transgression? And who am I to draw a definitive line for the past and the future?
I read Céline despite his moral bankruptcy. I read him with that bankruptcy in the back of my mind. That rubs me the wrong way. And it is precisely that friction that makes me more alert.
The mature position
Perhaps that is the mature position: not pretending that art is autonomous, but also not pretending that it completely coincides with the moral record of its creator. Art history is not a gallery of saints. It is a filing cabinet full of geniuses, opportunists, power-hungry individuals, and visionaries—often in one and the same person.
Let's stop asking whether that's okay and start asking what it does to us that we continue to look, continue to read, continue to listen. That answer is less comfortable but more honest. For art teachers, the task here is not to provide moral answers, but to guide moral questions.