Should we censor art and books to fit our times?

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has given several of its paintings new, more PC titles – but how far should such changes go? Joseph Harker and Stephen Moss debate.

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Joseph Harker: ‘Changing the words can bring a story into line with the original intention’

The Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, says he would never remove offensive words from the title of an artwork on display in his gallery. His views contrast with those of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has changed the titles of several of its paintings to take account of modern sensibilities. For example, Young Negro Girl, painted around 1900 by the Dutch artist Simon Maris, has been retitled Young Girl Holding a Fan. Serota says he would only do this if the artist gave permisison to do so – which means that for historic art he’d do nothing.

We should tread with extreme caution before taking such a drastic step as renaming art, and there’s a clear danger of oversensitivity in making any decision. But for Serota to say “never” is wrong. There are many words and phrases which, while accepted in their day, are clearly insulting and derogatory in the modern context and distort or confuse our understanding of the art itself.

For example, when Huckleberry Finn was republished a few years ago its liberal use of the N-word was replaced with the word “slave”. In the white-supremacist era in which the book was written, just 20 years after the abolition of slavery, the N-word was clearly acceptable among its mainly white readership. The story’s underlying liberal message, though, could be lost if the modern reader was distracted by language which, today, is only used by bigots. In fact, if the original story wasn’t meant to be hate-filled, changing the words can actually bring it into line with the original intention rather than distorting it with words now out of context.

Stephen Moss: ‘Wrenching art from its context is a barrier to seeing and thinking’

That’s a very clever argument on Huck Finn – bringing the book more into line with what Mark Twain intended. But ultimately I don’t buy it. We have no right to change any of the original words written by the author – unless we present the book as a translation or adaptation. One of the things we should treasure about a book is that it is a time capsule that preserves the way an age thought about itself. Once we start tinkering with it to bring it up to date, we lose much of what makes it unique and valuable in the first place.

If we start by censoring Twain, where do we stop? Clearly, The Merchant of Venice is antisemitic. Do we rewrite it or just not stage it? Fagin in Oliver Twist is another antisemitic caricature. Another rewrite. And what on earth do we do with all the antisemitic lines in the poetry of TS Eliot? “The rats are underneath the piles. / The Jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs.” Out with the blue pencil. But that way madness lies, because once you’ve started, where do you stop? Everything written before our conformist PC age is fair game.

As for works of art, who cares what they’re called? Gallery-goers need to get thicker skins. Gauguin’s entire oeuvre is western colonialist, his depictions of Tahitians exploitative and patronising, but that doesn’t mean we ignore him or write off his work. We judge it in its context. Censorship and wrenching art from its original context are barriers to seeing and thinking.

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