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Nuclear Explosions Key To Spotting Fake Art
Socguy writes "A Russian art curator, Elena Basner, is claiming to have a foolproof method for determining whether or not particular paintings have been created since 1945. She claims that isotopes released into the environment by man-made nuclear explosions have found their way into types of the natural oils used to make paints."
It used to be that the only downside of buying a fake was wasting your money. Now, the fraudsters will use radioactive paint, and if you buy a fake you'll get cancer.
As far as I'm concerned, if the copy is good enough that it can't be told from the original without doing a detailed analysis with fancy equipment, it's just as good as the real thing. Maybe even better if it's in a better shape.
The only exception I can see is for the people actually interested in doing chemical analysis of the painting. But that shouldn't really be a concern for people looking for something to hang in their room/mansion/compound.
I'm sure I saw this on an episode of Law & Order CI a while ago... like season 1 episode 2 I think... 7 years ago...
Man that guy is so smart!
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
Forgers will just switch to doing more Jackson Pollock.
No one can tell the fakes from the real thing anyway.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Off the top of my head, here are some ideas:
Yes, these are not terribly practical, but if someone could get millions of dollars for a few high-quality fakes, this would just be the cost of doing business.
So, in summary, her assertion "ironclad - that couldn't be disputed" seems overstated. I'll grant that it IS an additional hurdle to overcome, but sufficiently motivated people WILL find a way.
Not true! He's not a Muslim! Learn to read and research instead of spouting off what you heard Rush Limbaugh spewing on the radio. And even if he was, why would that be a problem? Muslims are not the enemy. It's unthinking people like yourselves who pose the greatest threat to the United States(whether they be Al-Qaeda or American citizens). Sorry about the OT post.
It's not like there wasn't any fission before we tested nuclear weapons. After all it's what uranium does naturally and people in europe were experiment with radioactive isotopes for some time before we got to nuclear weapons.
However, an accurate comparison of the ratios of these radioactive isotopes would probably be sufficent to eliminate other types of contamination (using paints that came from near a natural deposit of radioactive minerals). Likely the ratios from nuclear explosions would be different than from probable types of accidental exposure. And if you really want to get fancy you can example the ratios of these elements to their decay products.
Of course this won't stop forgers willing to put in enough effort. Likely one could either create paints/materials out of old materials from before nuclear tests or go the cheap way and 'accidentally' expose your painting to radioactive sources that would create obvious false positives. Then again I'm not sure it's worth any forger's interest to put in that much effort. It's probably safer not to aim a bit lower rather than forge works likely to be subject to this level of scrutiny.
Good idea though.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Parent may be offtopic, but he's right.
The article doesn't explicitly say that there is a working method based on this concept, nor does it give any concrete statistics regarding how reliable it is, how many fakes have been found, etc. Consider it vaporware until somebody proves that they've done it.
Yes! I'm glad other people feel this way as well. It's always seemed kinda stupid to me to go out of your way to see (or worse purchase) the 'real' painting when you don't have the skill to tell it apart from a well made fake. I mean if you just want social status or the chance to brag to your friends then fine but most people take themselves to be valuing these works of art because of their artistic value. But if you can't tell if it's the real thing by visual inspection then the fake has just as much artistic value.
However, I would take this point even further. It's not just that a good copy of a van Gogh or forged original Shakespeare folio have just as much artistic value but also that similar paintings done today do as well. It's absurd that we argue over whether certain works were written by shakespeare as if it would make them better plays if they had been and take some undiscovered painting by a classical master to be a great work but dismiss it if we discover it was truly modern.
Frankly, I think the reason that so many old things are considered great works of art (Shakespeare, dutch masters, etc..) is because we confuse artistic contribution and genius with artistic value. If I paint something in the style of the dutch masters or a write a new Shakespearean folio I haven't displayed the artistic genius that the original artist did because I had modern tools and knowledge of the original. My work would also lack the impact and wouldn't require the bravery that the originals did. However, none of that means my work has any less artistic value or offers a worse aesthetic experience.
Art really should work like science does. We should take the best ideas from our predecessors and shamelessly copy them while improving them where we can. We don't go back and read Newton and neither does it make sense to look at the originals for anything but historical purpose. But it seems people really really want to engage in ancestor worship and believe that there is some greater value to these artworks even to the people who like them less than modern works and the power of placebo is HUGE.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
right?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Please find hereby enclosed my cotation for :
- 400 000 slaves,
- whips, manacles, paraphernallia
- 100 000 000 tons of stone
Delivery by UPS or USPO overnight at your charge. I accept Paypal.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Not to diminish the idea, but this is already done with wine. I suspect it is much EASIER to do it with wine rather than with paintings, as you are relying on deposition rather than absorption through soil, but the technique has been around for a bit.
...and look into the past to see what they are referring to...
I see... I see... letters forming...
.
I see a word...
.
It says... O..o.. OBAMA!!!
.
.
.
I can use this same technique to determine if the works of art are genuine.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Not on that scale :-P
I mean the experiments such as whether it's possible to carry a 20 ton rock from point A to B, or trying to figure out how to build Stonehenge with the equipment and materials available back then. Once the basic technique is tested though, there's no need to do it at full scale though. Once you figure out how to make a brick, you know you can make 10000, it's just an exercise in scaling the operation.
Put down your bible and pick up a history book. The pyramids weren't built by slaves.
Wanted: slave labour. Where? Central Kansas. Skills? Must be experienced with moving 100-tonne blocks of granite hundreds of feet of incline using nothing more than hemp ropes and simple levers. Should be willing to work in summer heat without shelter, food or water (e.g. 'till death mercifully takes you) Pay? none. Benefits? none. Extra consideration given if you can provide your own mummies...
It wasn't held by the same hands, in the same places, or were created by the same person. It's a historical thing, not a utilitarian one.
Twinstiq, game news
Not quite. Prior to 1900, there wasn't any fission or even really atomic research going on at all. In fact, prior to the 1940's, there really wasn't any fission research at all.
The atmospheric nuclear bomb testing program did put a whole bunch of crazy elements into the atmosphere that previously simply weren't there. The elements that are being used for identification purposes here are relatively short-lived (in terms of our lifetime as a species) but do last for thousands or millions of years.
Please, with the false positive suggestion, tell me exactly how that would be done? Some sort of weird X-ray machine? A "spray bottle" of radioactive materials to coat the painting? "Nuking" the painting in some sort of weird oven?
This is something which is bound into the very fabric and structure of modern plants and animals due to all of us breathing these elements. These elements simply didn't exist in the atmosphere prior to the atomic bomb tests, and any "contamination" as you are suggesting here would be quickly and easily identified as being just that: Some idiot trying to spread radioactive materials in public places. Generally that is frowned upon as a terrorist act by itself, regardless of your application of that material on paintings or a doorway, not to mention that radioactive materials concentrated enough to be able to tag enough paintings in this way would likely end up killing the tagger through radiation poisoning.
yes. glad to see this point brought up. it is well known that aliens built the pyramids.
ôó
I just love the sound of a joke that passes way over your head...
I'm guessing that we'll find a lot of "fake art" in Tehran. One or two nukes should do the trick
proton and neutron irradiation perhaps? Just a thought; I haven't put any thought into whether or not this would have any reasonable possibility of creating a false positive.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Keep in mind that the elements that we are talking about were forged in the heat of a nuclear blast.... where the temperatures (even temporarily) were far hotter than even the center of the Sun. Indeed, they were approaching temperatures normally found in Supernovas. This is particularly true for the "Hydrogen Bomb" tests that resulted in the discovery of Einsteinium and some other fun trans-uranium elements
Irradiation of the sort you are suggesting isn't going to forge these sort of elements. It may create some detectable radiation on the surface, but it certainly wouldn't create Strontium or Cesium. Assuming perhaps that may even be possible, getting the proportions to be exact with what you would expect with modern pigments would be incredibly difficult. A "false positive" that has twice the expected quantity of Strontium would certainly be a dead giveaway that it has been tampered with.
Also, what are you using as a source for a neutron emitter? You have two real choices: Highly radioactive material or a nuclear fusion reactor (and yes, I'm being serious here!) You can buy commercial fusion reactors that are a neutron source, but even they aren't exactly tiny things. And how are you going to get that into a museum in the first place when your object is to create false positives to throw off "evidence" and "prove" that this dating method is a pile of BS?
I still stand by my assertion that you would likely die as a tagger trying to create these false positives in the first place, and it would be far more expensive than to simply let things be. While it may be "possible" to deliberately create a false positive on classical art works, there is a huge difference between remotely possible and something that can be practical like defacing the works of Picasso with a can of graffiti spray paint. What kind of museum security do you think would even allow such mundane vandalism to works valuable enough to be considered an art forger's target?
If you expanded your campaign to include not must Muslism sympathizers but also Muslism-hating bigots you could take care of the entire problem in one fell swoop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_(Law_%26_Order:_Criminal_Intent_episode)
loL
Art forgery plan:
Step one: Buy or build my own synchrotron
Step two...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Bush beat you to the bombing your own country. Remember 9/11? Total inside job.
It's art. Art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I'm not an art critic, nor am I familiar with Pollock's work but, why do you feel the need to try to convince us that that we shouldn't like it? Hey, it's not my fault if you don't "get it".
[sarcasm]Now, on the other hand, if you had spouted off about what religion I should be, I'd have been all ears.[/sarcasm]
Beliefs are beliefs. I'll think for myself, thank you.