Benjamin Ivry’s fascinating post does a welcome job of setting the record straight on Philip Johnson and his appalling record of cheerleading for the Nazis. If anything, it is even more shocking than Ivry relates. He might have mentioned how Johnson accompanied Hitler’s panzer divisions on their Blitzkrieg through Poland in September 1939 and watched the bombardment of Warsaw. (His chipper report? “It was a stirring spectacle.”) An obituary of Johnson by Anne Applebaum, published in the Washington Post on February 2, 2005, provides much additional useful material.

In his response to Ivry’s post, Lawrence Gulotta asks if we can “enjoy the art and ignore the politics.” The answer is maybe—but not until we have fully and honestly explored the connections between the art and politics. In the case of Leni Riefenstahl, for example, the political content of their work is explicit, and we know precisely how much we may permit ourselves to admire the editing of Triumph of the Will. In the case of Johnson, is there a connection between the sinister politics and the frosty, impersonal austerity of his International Style architecture? So far, there has been no thoughtful exploration of the question. It is easy to see why: for over sixty years, Johnson was the most influential figure in the Museum of Modern Art, exerting ferocious power in the architectural profession, architectural publishing, and schools of architecture. No such investigation was possible. Now it is, and until it has been completed, perhaps Johnson’s architectural legacy must be accompanied by an asterisk, much like those that mark the records of steroid-using baseball stars.