The Fredösphere

Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, "The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally." He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis....

Today, any debate over an important figure with a fascist or Communist background easily becomes an occasion for blame games between right and left. Mr. Johnson is no exception. Morally serious people can have different views of his personal culpability.

But what's essential is to let the shadow fall - to acknowledge that fascism touched something important in his sensibility. Throughout his life, he was an ardent admirer of Nietzsche. His understanding of the great philosopher was surely deeper than that of the Nazis, but he was overly enchanted by the idea of "a superior being," "the will to power" and Nietzsche's view of art. And he loved the monumental.

Philip Johnson now seems like an emblematic figure partly because he appears to have been happily, marvelously, provocatively, disturbingly hollow. It is an underlying fear of Western culture, one that has lasted since World War II, that there is no larger or ennobling content to mine. Mr. Johnson's main flaws as an artist - his tastes for razzle-dazzle and overweening scale - are equally the weaknesses of American secular culture. His main strengths - his openness to change, playfulness and urbane rejection of the Miss Grundys of the world - are equally it strengths.