In the cultural world we don’t always consider the living artisans and artists whose livelihood is undermined by fakes. World’s Largest Native American Art Forgery Ring Distributed $12M of Fakes US government attorney supports 18-month sentences and fines for the accused, but in many ways the damage is done, casting both real and fake Native… Continue reading Contemporary fakes and native American artists (hyperallergic)
Tag: Fakes and forgeries
Fakes and forgeries, sometimes including hoaxes
The Voynich Manuscript and Fakery
[Update 10/14/2013 See comment below.] The latest New Yorker has an article about the Voynich manuscript by Reed Johnson. The article helpfully reviews the provenance (some of it possibly putative) as well as the modern history and reception of the very strange manuscript. In one throw-away line, Johnson notes that some people have questioned whether… Continue reading The Voynich Manuscript and Fakery
The Marks of a Hoax: Dickens and Dostoevsky
Copy of a Photograph of Charles Dickens (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Russian literature specialist Eric Naiman describes a fake anecdote in “When Dickens met Dostoevsky,” (TLS 10 April 2013), and the bizarre, convoluted, trail that led him to find multiple pseudonyms of someone who seems to be a disgruntled independent scholar. I think some points turned… Continue reading The Marks of a Hoax: Dickens and Dostoevsky
Review by Catherine S. Sezgin on Jonathan Keats’ art forgery book
Catherine Schofield Sezgin at the ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes against Art) reviews Forged: Why Fakes Are The Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats (Oxford UP 2013). (Keats is a conceptual artist living in San Francisco.) Sezgin’s review is a series of excerpts, one on Han van Meegeren. Other of Sezgin’s segmented… Continue reading Review by Catherine S. Sezgin on Jonathan Keats’ art forgery book
Conspiracy Theories… among Engineers
Where do conspiracy theories come from? I was fascinated by this link at the technology news site ArsTechnica. The article tries to debunk an urban rumor, “Does Apple really assign engineers to “fake” projects as a loyalty test?” It struck me as a classic conspiracy theory. What gives rise to such thinking? Engineers come to… Continue reading Conspiracy Theories… among Engineers