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Forgery

Forgery

Forgery is the process of making or adapting objects or documents (see false document), with the intention to deceive. The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful mis-attributions. In the 16th century imitators of Albrecht Dürer's style of printmaking improved the market for their own prints by signing them "AD", making them forgeries. In the 20th century the art market made forgeries highly profitable. There are widespread forgeries of especially valued artists, such as drawings meant to be by Picasso, Klee, and Matisse. This usage of 'forgery' does not derive from metalwork done at a 'forge', but it has a parallel history. A sense of "to counterfeit" is already in the Anglo-French verb forger "falsify." Forgery is one of the techniques of fraud, including identity theft. Forgery is one of the threats that have to be addressed by security engineering. A forgery is essentially concerned with a produced or altered object. Where the prime concern of a forgery is less focused on the object itself— what it is worth or what it "proves"— than on a tacit statement of criticism that is revealed by the reactions the object provokes in others, then the larger process is a hoax. In a hoax, a cultural meme, such as a rumor, or a genuine object "planted" in a concocted situation, may substitute for a forged physical object.

Topics in forgery

- Archaeological forgery
- Discoveries of Shinichi Fujimura
- James Ossuary
- Piltdown Man
- Moses Shapira
- Tiara of Saitapharne, Louvre
- Lady of Elx
- See also Kensington Runestone controversy
- Drake's Plate of Brass
- Sinaia lead plates
- Art forgery
- Tom Keating
- Eric Hebborn
- Elmyr de Hory
- Dürer's imitators
- Camille Corot's imitators
- Han van Meegeren's Vermeers
- Michelangelo's Cupid
- 'Etruscan' warriors, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The 'Cellini Cup'
- Samson ceramic forgeries
- Furniture faking
- Literary forgery - these literary forgeries all had some effect on the course of cultural history. Other literary forgeries, such as the Hitler diaries, briefly achieve wide notoriety, without affecting subsequent history; they are brought together as literary hoaxes.
- Epistle to the Laodiceans
- Theology of Aristotle
- Ademar of Chabannes' forged Life of St. Martial
- Thomas Chatterton's pseudo-medieval poetry
- Ossianic poems
- Manuscript of Dvůr Králové and Manuscript of Zelená Hora
- The Salamander Letter, which offered an alternative account of Joseph Smith's finding of the Book of Mormon, written by master forger Mark Hofmann.
- Relic forgery - It is not the efficacy of a relic that is in question, but only its provenance.
- cf True Cross
- cf Shroud of Turin
- Biblical Archaeology - Ancient artifacts
- Moses Shapira
- Political forgery - false documents used for purposes of black propaganda.
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- Zinoviev Letter
- Tanaka Memorial

References

- Robert Cohon, Discovery & Deceit: archaeology & the forger's craft Kansas: Nelson-Atkins Museum, 1996
- Oscar Muscarella, The Lie Became Great: the forgery of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, 2000

External links

- [http://www.caslon.com.au/forgeryprofile4.htm Wide-ranging bibliographies of archaeological forgeries, art forgeries etc.]
- [http://www.museum-security.org/forgery2.htm Museum security Network: sources of information on art forgery; gives encyclopedic links.]
- [http://www.cycleback.com Cycleback: information resource about authentication and forgery detection]
- [http://www.paper-shredder-expert.com/Why-do-I-need-a-shredder.htm Why do I need a paper shredder] Category:Illegal occupations
- Category:Deception

False document

A false document is a form of verisimilitude that attempts to create in the reader (viewer, audience, etc) a sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief. That is, it wants to fool the audience briefly into thinking that what is being presented is actually a fact. This is not to be confused with a mockumentary, an admittedly fictional film done in the manner of a documentary. In practice, the device takes a very simple form. The work of art (be it a text, a moving image, a comic book or whatever) usually is composed of or includes some piece of forgery. The false document effect can be achieved in many ways including faked police reports, newspaper articles, bibliographical references and documentary footage. The effect can be extended outside of the confines of the text by way of supplementary material such as badges, ID cards, diaries, letters or other objects. The moral and legal implications of false document art are, by necessity, complex and perhaps insoluble. The difference between a great artistic achievement and a stunning forgery is slim. Sometimes the false document technique can be the subject of a work instead of its technique, though these two approaches are not mutually exclusive as many texts which engage falseness do so both on the literal and the thematic level.

Origin of the false document technique

One of the earliest examples of the technique is the 16th century romance Amadis of Gaul (1508, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo).

False documents in art

Orson Welles' F for Fake is a prime example of a film which is both about falsification (art forgery and the journalism surrounding art forgery) as well as having falsified moments within the film. The movie follows the exploits of a famous art forger, his biographer Clifford Irving, and the subsequent fake autobiography of Howard Hughes that Irving tries to publish. The issues of veracity and forgery are explored in the film while at the same time, Welles tricks the audience by incorporating fake bits of narrative alongside the documentary footage. Another artist who has run afoul of the technique is the artist JSG Boggs, whose life and work have been extensively explored by author and journalist Lawrence Weschler. Boggs draws currency with exceptional care and accuracy, but he only ever draws one side. He then attempts to buy things with the piece of paper upon which he has drawn the currency. His goal is to pass each bill for its face value in common transactions. He buys lunch, clothes, and lodging in this manner, and after the transactions are complete his bills fetch many times their face value on the art market along with accompanying evidence (receipts, photos, and the like) which prove the veracity of the actual transaction. Boggs does not make any money off of the much larger art market value of his work. He only exists on the profit of the actual transaction. He has been arrested in many countries, and there is much controversy surrounding his work. Mostly, however, the technique is employed in more mundane ways that hark back to its nineteenth century origins. Whether or not a particular piece of art is a false document, or is using false documentary techniques in a central way, is of course arguable. Usually, the character and extent of the use is examined.

False documents, fakery and forgery

Documentary filmmaking, and other attempts at actual documentation, can wittingly and unwittingly participate in the form as its goals of authenticity are so closely aligned with direct false documentation (that is, in both cases there is an element of authenticity and an element of narrative fudging). In Schwarzenegger's Pumping Iron for example, Arnold talks about how his father died in the months preceding a major body building competition. He uses this anecdote to illustrate how important the final months before a competition are to a truly dedicated bodybuilder. He says that, though his father's funeral was set during the penultimate month, he did not attend because he could not be distracted from training. However, in the companion book it is revealed that at the time of printing, Arnold's father had not died. It does not say the story was a lie, it merely provides contrary evidence. Schwarzenegger was executive producer of both the film and the companion book. It has been theorized by Professor Sally Robinson that Schwarzenegger was intentionally undermining his own narrative, effectively creating a mildly self-deprecating re-examination of his own obsessions for perfection at any cost. In the end, whether Arnold intentionally fabricated the story for a desired effect is left to the audience.

False documents in theory

- Boggs by Lawrence Weschler
- Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
- Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard

False documents in fiction

Several fiction writers use the technique of inventing a piece of literature or non-fiction and referring to this work as if it actually existed, often also quoting from the work. Blurring the line of reality and fiction is an important component of horror, mystery, detective and fantasy narratives because they wish to engender in the reader a sense of wonder, and of danger, both of which need to feel more present than a typical narrative form would allow. For this reason, false documentary techniques have been in use for at least as long as these literary genres have been around. Frankenstein draws heavily on a forged document feel, as does Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and many of the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a particularly elaborate variation. The following is a list of "false document" fictional documents:
- Miguel de Cervantes claims that all the chapters but the first in Don Quixote are translated from an Arabic manuscript by Cide Hamete Benengeli. He is parodying a plot device of chivalry books. For instance, Joanot Martorell in the introductory letter to Tirant lo Blanc claims to be not the creator of a fiction, but the translator of an English historical manuscript.
- Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was supposedly the autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spent 28 years on a remote island. The account was presented as a factual event, in a genre called histories.
- Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was originally attributed to "Lemuel Gulliver", a ship's surgeon, and purported to be a factual account of four of his sea voyages. It even includes a rather irate bogus note from Gulliver to his publisher. It may be debatable whether the book is an example of a False Document, but is included because it initially bore little or no indication that it was a work of fiction.
- Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is told in the form of numerous documents, including journals and newspaper articles. A brief introduction claims that they are all real.
- The Necronomicon appearing in the works of H. P. Lovecraft
- Author William Goldman claims in his book The Princess Bride that the story he tells is an abridged version of the Florentian literary masterpiece by the great (and fictional) S. Morgenstern.
- Fritz Leiber's novella Our Lady of Darkness revolves around the secret occult studies of fictional author/occultist Thibaut de Castries and his book Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities.
- First Encyclopaedia of Tlön appearing in the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, plus several other fictional books invented by the same author, including an entire bibliography for the fictional author Pierre Menard.
- Several works of the fictional author Fanshawe appearing in Paul Auster's The Locked Room in The New York Trilogy.
- The Red Book of Westmarch and a surviving copy of it called The Thain's Book, portions of which were "translated" by J.R.R Tolkien into his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
- Never Whistle While You're Pissing is the work of the fictional character Hagbard Celine in the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
- Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead is a fabricated recreation of the Old English epic Beowulf in the form of a scholastic translation of Ahmad ibn Fadlan's tenth century manuscript. Many of his other fictions, such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, also incoporated large amounts of fabricated scientific documents in the form of diagrams, DNA sequences, footnotes and bibliography.
- Dozens of fictional footnotes referencing events, books of magical scholarship, and biographies in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the debut novel by Susanna Clarke.
- Milorad Pavich's Dictionary of the Khazars is a work of fiction in the form of three fictional encyclopedias, which incorporate viewpoints that provide inconsistent descriptions of the events they describe.
- A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs claims to be the manuscript of John Carter except for the first chapter explaining how the manuscript was received.
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a work of fiction revolving around the discovery of a manuscript critiquing a documentary called The Navidson Record and its effects on both its author and editor.

Hoaxes

A number of hoaxes have involved false documents:
- "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
by Alan Sokal, (Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text). See Sokal Affair
- "The endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline", Isaac Asimov.
- Ova Prima
- Salamander Letter
- Journal of Irreproducible Results
- The Report From Iron Mountain
- The Oera Linda book
- The Hitler Diaries

False documents as a field of study

False documents were recently the topic of a graduate level seminar in the humanities at the University of Michigan. The seminar was taught by Professor Eileen Pollack. While the form has existed for at least two hundred years, focused study is fairly recent.

External links

- [http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/epollack.htm False Document Article in the AWP Magazine] Category:Narratology
-

Deception

Deception (or mystification) is to intentionally distort the truth in order to mislead others. Deception is involved in propaganda and game theory (to deceive the opponents). Deception, rather than falsehood, is the essence of the lie. Thus, fiction is not true by definition, but is not taken as a lie or a deception. The reader of fiction has the duty to protect himself from deception. What one believes to be true is not a lie, though not true. Thus, freedom of speech gives the right to express statements that are in fact not true, and which may or may not have the intent to deceive. In many cases it is difficult, even in hindsight, to distinguish deception by somebody or an organization from providing unintentionally wrong information. One of the reasons is that a person or an entire organization may be self-deceived. Deception is a reality and therefore a fascinating paradox. There are two classes of deception: concealing the truth (dissimulate or gloss over) and exhibiting false information (simulate).

Dissimulation

Dissimulation consist in concealing the truth, like inconvenient or secret information. There are three dissimulation techniques: camouflage (blend into the background), disguise appearance (altering the model) and dazzle (obfuscate the model).

Camouflage

:See also: glittering generalities and transfer within the techniques of propaganda generation Examples:
- Camouflage as a form of visual deception is an essential part of modern military tactics.

Disguise appearance

A disguise is an appearance to create the impression of being somebody or something else; for a well-known person this is also called incognito. Examples:
- The fictional Sherlock Holmes often diguised himself as somebody else to avoid being recognised.
- Depict a war as a peace mission.

Dazzle

:See also: distraction by phenomenon within the article Media manipulation Examples:
- The defensive mechanisms of most octopuses to eject a thick blackish ink in a large cloud to aid in escaping from predators.

Simulation

Simulation consist in exhibiting false information. There are three simulation techniques: mimicry (copying another model), fabricate (making up a new model), attract (offering an alternative model)

Mimicry

In animals' worls is the resemblance, through natural selection, of one organism to another, or to a natural object. Animals often attempt to deceive predators or prey by their appearance or behavior.

Fabricate

Attract

References

- Bruce Schneier, Secrets and Lies Category:Communication

Fraud

In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain, although it has a more specific legal meaning, the exact details varying between jurisdictions. Many hoaxes are fraudulent, although those not made for personal gain are not best described in this way. Not all frauds are hoaxes - electoral fraud, for example. Fraud permeates many areas of life, including art, archaelogogy and science. In the broad legal sense a fraud is any crime or civil wrong for gain that utilises some deception practiced on the victim as its principal method. In criminal law, fraud is the crime or offense of deliberately deceiving another in order to damage them — usually, to obtain property or services from him or her unjustly. [http://www.lectlaw.com/def/f079.htm]. Fraud can be accomplished through the aid of forged objects. In criminal law it is called "theft by deception." Fraud can be committed through many methods, including mail, wire, phone, and the Internet. Acts which may constitute criminal fraud include:
- bait and switch
- confidence tricks such as the 419 fraud, Spanish Prisoner, and the shell game
- false advertising
- identity theft
- false billing
- forgery of documents or signatures
- taking money which is under your control, but not yours (embezzlement)
- health fraud, selling of products of spurious use, such as quack medicines
- creation of false companies or "long firms"
- false insurance claims
- bankruptcy fraud, is a US federal crime that can lead to criminal prosecution under the charge of theft of the goods or services
- investment frauds, such as Ponzi schemes
- securities frauds such as pump and dump
- Job Fraud such as promising to pay someone for services performed, and then denying they owe money Fraud, in addition to being a criminal act, is also a type of civil law violation known as a tort. A tort is a civil wrong for which the law provides a remedy. A civil fraud typically involves the act of making a false representation of a fact susceptible of actual knowledge which is relied upon by another person, to that person's detriment.

English Law

In England and Wales there is no such offence as fraud, which term is used generically to describe a number of offences in which the overriding component is that of deception. There are allied torts at civil law such as Conversion. Each of the criminal offences have a further common element of dishonesty, although in some there is no requirement that the dishonest person is intent on gaining himself, it is sufficient that he has an intent to cause to loss to another. The criminal offences of fraud are to be found, principally, in the Theft Act 1968, the Theft Act 1978 and the Theft (Amendment) Act 1996 which created the new offence of Obtaining a Money Transfer by Deception. More specific offences may be found in other statutes such as Impersonation of a Police Officer as defined in Sec. 90 of the Police Act 1996; or Using a Forged Instrument within the terms of the Forgery & Counterfeiting Act 1981 (previously an offence known under the somewhat prosaic term of "Uttering"). Criminal offences of fraud at English Law:
- Obtaining Property by Deception
- Obtaining Services by Deception
- Obtaining a Pecuniary Advantage by Deception
- False Accounting
- False Statements by Company Directors
- Suppression of Documents
- Retaining a Wrongful Credit
- Fraudulent trading

Known and alleged fraudsters and various forms of fraud

- Alves Reis, a Portuguese fraudster who forged documents to print official escudo banknotes. He is considered to be the biggest counterfeiter of the 20th century. In 1925 he counterfeited 100,000,000 PTE. Adjusted for inflation, it would be worth about 150 Million USD today.
- Frank Abagnale, US impostor who wrote bad checks
- Ivan Boesky, inside trader in the 1980s
- Otto von Bressensdorf. German-born fraudster
- Cassie Chadwick, who pretended to be Andrew Carnegie's daughter to get loans
- Anthony Di Angelis, "the Salad Oil King"
- John Draper, also known as Captain Crunch, was a phone phreaker (not really a fraudster but he famously known as a fraudster by phone company in early and late 1970's)
- William Duer, accused of embezzlement of $238,000 from US Treasury Department in the 1790s
- Leontina Espinoza, a Chilean woman who did not give birth to 58 children
- Billie Sol Estes - cotton subsidy and loan fraud in 1960s, resulting in the eventual creation of the federal Office of Inspector General
- Megan Ireland, Australian con artist and Lottery scammer
- Sante and Kenneth Kimes, US fraudsters
- Ivar Kreuger “The Match King”
- Dennis Levine
- Gregor MacGregor, Scottish conman who tried to attract investment and settlers for a non-existent country of Poyais
- Robert Maxwell, UK newspaper tycoon who milked his companies dry
- Gaston Means
- Michael Milken, "The Junk Bond King"
- Barry Minkow and the ZZZZ Best
- Antonio Jiminez Moreno, welfare fraud
- Frederick Emerson Peters, US impersonator who wrote bad checks
- Charles Ponzi, and Ponzi scheme
- Peter Popoff, whose faith healing-based Pentecostal televangelist ministry was debunked by professional skeptic James Randi and television presenter Johnny Carson in the 1980s
- Christopher Rocancourt who defrauded Hollywood celebrities
- Serge Rubinstein, Russian-born diamond swindler
- Rajendra Sethia, Indian fraudster
- Franz Tausend, fake alchemist -
- Richard Whitney, stole from the New York Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund in 1930s
- Dorothy Mae Woods, US "Welfare Queen"
- Robert Vesco, US fugitive financier

Forgery

Topics in forgery

References

External links

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (May 21, 1471 - April 6, 1528) was a German painter, wood carver, engraver, and mathematician. He is best known for his woodcuts in series, including the Apocalypse (1498), two series on the crucifixion of Christ, the Great Passion (1498-1510) and the Little Passion (1510-11) as well as many of his individual prints, such as Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513) and Melancholia I (1514). He made the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Early life in Nuremberg

Dürer was born in the Imperial Free City of Nuremberg. His family came from the Kingdom of Hungary, germanizing the family name of Thürer when they settled in Nuremberg soon after the middle of the 15th century. His father, also called Albrecht, was a goldsmith and served as assistant to Hieronymus Helfer, and in 1468 married his daughter Barbara. They had eighteen children, of whom Albrecht was the second. Albrecht's brother, Hans Dürer, also became a renowned artist. Hans Dürer As a youngster, Albrecht the younger apprenticed under his father, where he learned the fine art of goldsmithing, and to handle a burin. Then at the age of fifteen Dürer was apprenticed to the principal painter of the town, Michael Wolgemut, a prolific if undistinguished producer of small works in the late Gothic style. Dürer learned not only painting but also wood carving and elementary copper engraving under Wolgemut. At the end of his apprenticeship in 1490 he travelled (the so-called Wanderjahre). In 1492 he arrived in Colmar, intending to study under Martin Schöngauer, a well regarded painter-engraver of his time. He found that Schongauer had died the previous year, but he was received kindly by the family of the deceased master there and in Basel. Under them he evidently had some practice both in metal-engraving and in furnishing designs for the woodcutter. He left Basel some time in 1494 and travelled briefly in the Low Countries before he returned to Nuremberg. From this period, little of the work that can be attributed to him with certainty survives, though several of the illustrations of the Nuremberg Chronicle are sometimes attributed to him.

First visit to Italy

On July 7, 1494 Dürer was married, according to an arrangement made during his absence, to Agnes Frey, the daughter of a local merchant. His relationship with his wife is unclear and her reputation has suffered from a posthumous assault by Dürer's friends. He did not remain in Nuremberg long; in the autumn of 1494 he travelled to Italy, leaving his wife at Nuremberg. He went to Venice, evidence of his travels being derived from drawings and engravings that are closely linked to existing northern Italian works by Mantegna, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Lorenzo di Credi and others. Some time in 1495 Dürer must have returned to Nuremberg, where he seems to have lived and worked for possibly the next ten years, producing most of his notable prints. 1495

Return to Nuremberg

During the first few years from 1495 onwards he worked in the established Germanic and northern forms but was open to the influences of the Renaissance. His best works in this period were for wood-block printing, typical scenes of popular devotion developed into his famous series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse, first carved in 1498. Counterpointed with the first seven of scenes of the Great Passion in the same year, and a little later a series of eleven on the Holy Family and of saints. Around 1504-1505 he carved the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin. Neither these nor the Great Passion were published till several years later. Dürer trained himself in the more finely detailed and expensive copper-engraving. He attempted no subjects of the scale of his woodcuts, but produced a number of Madonnas, single figures from scripture or of the saints, some nude mythologies, and groups, sometimes satirical, of ordinary people. The Venetian artist Jacopo de Barbari, whom Dürer had met in Venice, came to Nuremberg for a while in 1500. He influenced Dürer with the new developments in perspective, anatomy and proportion, from which Dürer began his own studies. A series of extant drawings show Dürer's experiments in human proportion, up to the famous engraving of Adam and Eve (1504) which showed his firm and detailed grasp of landscape had extended into the quality of flesh surfaces by the subtlest use of the graving-tool known to him. Two or three other technical masterpieces were produced up to 1505, when he made a second visit to Italy.

Second visit to Italy

In Italy he turned his hand to painting, at first producing a series of works by tempera-painting on linen, including portraits and altarpieces, notably the Paumgartner altarpiece and the Adoration of the Magi. In early 1506 he returned to Venice, and stayed there until the spring of 1507. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by Vasari. Dürer's engravings had by this time attained great popularity and had begun to be copied. In Venice he was given a valuable commission from the emigrant German community for the church of St. Bartholomew. The picture painted by Dürer was closer to the Italian style - the Adoration of the Virgin, also known as the Feast of Rose Garlands; it was subsequently acquired by the Emperor Rudolf II and taken to Prague. Other paintings Dürer produced in Venice include The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch, a Christ disputing with the Doctors (apparently produced in a mere five days) and a number of smaller works. Prague

Nuremberg and the masterworks

Prague Despite the regard in which he was held by the Venetians, Dürer was back in Nuremberg by mid-1507. He remained in Germany until 1520. His reputation spread all over Europe. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all the masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honored in exchanging drawings with Dürer. The years between his return from Venice and his journey to the Netherlands are commonly divided according to the type of work with which he was principally occupied. The first five years, 1507-1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life. In them, working with a vast number of preliminary drawings and studies, he produced what have been accounted his four best works in painting - Adam and Eve (1507), Virgin with the Iris (1508), the altarpiece the Assumption of the Virgin (1509), and the Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints (1511). During this period he also completed the two woodcut series of the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin, both published in 1511 together with a second edition of the Apocalypse series. From 1511 to 1514, Dürer concentrated on engraving, both on wood and copper, but especially the latter. The major work he produced in this period was the thirty-seven subjects of the Little Passion on wood, published first in 1511, and a set of fifteen small copper-engravings on the same theme in 1512. In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Dürer's works in copper-engraving, The Knight and Death (or simply The Knight, as he called it, 1513), Melancolia and St Jerome in his Study (both 1514). In the years leading to 1520 he produced a wide range of works. Tempera on linen portraits in 1516. Engravings on many subjects, experiments in etching on plates of iron and zinc. A part of the Triumphal Gate and the Triumphal March for the Emperor Maximilian. He also did the marginal decorations for the Emperor's prayer-book and a portrait-drawing of the Emperor shortly before his death in 1519.

Journey to the Netherlands and beyond

In the summer of 1520 the desire of Dürer to secure new patronage following the death of Maximilian and an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to his fourth and last journey. Together with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the coronation of the new Emperor Charles V. He journeyed by the Rhine, Cologne, and then to Antwerp, where he was well received and produced numerous drawings in silverpoint, chalk or charcoal. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made excursions to Cologne, Nijmwegen, 's-Hertogenbosch, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Zeeland. He finally returned home in July 1521, having caught an undetermined illness which afflicted him for the rest of his life.

Final years in Nuremberg

1521 Back in Nuremberg, Dürer began work on a series of religious pictures. Many preliminary sketches and studies survive, but no paintings on the grand scale were ever carried out. This was due in part to his declining health, but more because of the time he gave to the preparation of his theoretical works on geometry and perspective, proportion and fortification. Though having little natural gift for writing, he worked hard to produce his works. The consequence of this shift in emphasis was that in the last years of his life Dürer produced, as an artist, comparatively little. In painting there was a portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher, a Madonna and Child (1526) and two panels showing St. John with St. Peter in front and St. Paul with St. Mark in the background. In copper-engraving Dürer produced only a number of portraits, those of the cardinal-elector of Mainz (The Great Cardinal), Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, and his friends the humanist scholar Willibald Pirckheimer, Philipp Melanchthon and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Of his books, Dürer succeeded in getting two finished and produced during his lifetime. One on geometry and perspective, which was published at Nuremberg in 1525, and one on fortification, published in 1527. His work on human proportion was brought out shortly after his death in 1528 at the age of 56.

External links

- http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/durer/
-
- http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/durer.html
- [http://www.aiwaz.net/durer/ Alternative Albrecht Durer]
- Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Category:Nuremberg ko:알브레히트 뒤러 ja:アルブレヒト・デューラー

20th century

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begins with the year 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One was advanced, erroneously, by Stephen Jay Gould. He claimed that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989, rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st Century and is seen by some as not being truly a part of the 20th Century.

Overview

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.
- Death rates
- Infant mortality
- Infectious disease
- Life expectancy
- Maternal death rates
- Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

- The assembly line and mass production of motor vehicles and other goods allowed manufacturers to produce more and cheaper products. This allowed the automobile to become the most important means of transportation.
- The invention of heavier-than-air flying machines and the jet engine allowed for the world to become "smaller". Space flight increased knowledge of the rest of the universe and allowed for global real-time communications via geosynchronous satellites.
- Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact
- Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication
- Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous computing, and all kinds of "intelligent" appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of exponentially growing calculation power (see supercomputer).
- The development of Nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides resulted in significantly higher agricultural yield.
- Advances in fundamental physics through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics led to the development of nuclear weapons (known informally as "the Bomb" and dropped on the industrial town of Hiroshima and the historic one of Nagasaki), the nuclear reactor, and the laser. Fusion power was studied extensively but remained an experimental technology at the end of the century.
- Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in Western societies.
- Most influential inventions in the 20th century: antibiotics, oral contraceptives, new plastics, transistors, Internet
- More...

Wars and politics

- Democratic nations began to extend voting privileges to all adults.
- Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the causes of World War I, the first of two wars to involve all the major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the British Commonwealth. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Ironically, it was said by many to be the 'War to end all Wars'.
- The economic and political aftermath of World War I led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe, and shortly to World War II. This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. While the First World War mainly cost lives among soldiers, civilians suffered greatly in the Second -- from the bombing of cities on both sides, and in the unprecedented German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust.
- During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, Communism became a major force in global politics, spreading all over the world: notably, to Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the western world, including wars in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1957 - 75).
- The "fall of Communism" in the late 1980s freed Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. It also led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism, and left the United States as the world's superpower.
- Through the League of Nations and, after World War II, the United Nations, international cooperation increased. Other efforts included the formation of the European Union, leading to a common currency in much of Western Europe, the euro around the turn of the millennium.
- The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the USA, the USSR, or China for defense.
- The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in a mostly Arab region of the world, fueled many conflicts in the region, which were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the Arab countries.
- The term Southeast Asia coined.

Culture and entertainment

- Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
- After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques women became more independent throughout the century.
- Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world. The Beatles, a 1960s British Rock and Roll band, becomes one of the most successful acts of all time, and is credited, in their experimental later albums, with permanently changing what was thought possible in popular music.
- Modern art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
- The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles.
- Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.

Disease and medicine

- Although the availability and quality of medicine continued to improve, epidemic diseases continued to spread, aided by modern transportation. An influenza pandemic, the Spanish Flu, killed 25 million between 1918 and 1919, while AIDS is yet uncured and treatments remain too expensive for wide use in developing countries.
- Advances in medicine, such as the invention of antibiotics, decreased the number of people dying from diseases. Contraceptive drugs and organ transplantation were developed. The discovery of DNA molecules and the advent of molecular biology allowed for cloning and genetic engineering.

Natural resources and the environment

- The widespread use of petroleum in industry -- both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane -- led to the vital geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became a center of geopolitical and military tension throughout the latter half of the century. (For example, oil was a factor in Japan's decision to go to war against the United States in 1941, and the oil cartel, OPEC, used an oil embargo of sorts in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s).
- A vast increase in fossil fuel consumption leads to depletion of natural resources, while air pollution has led to the develoment of an ozone hole and, many believe, global warming and both local and global climate change. The problem is increased by world-wide deforestation, also causing a loss of biodiversity. The problem of a depletion of natural resources is decreased by advances in drilling technology which led to a net increase in the amount of fossil fuel that is readily obtainable at the end of the century, as compared with the amount considered obtainable at the beginning of the century.

Significant people

Forgery

Topics in forgery

References

See also

External links

False document

Origin of the false document technique

False documents in art

False documents, fakery and forgery

False documents in theory

False documents in fiction

Hoaxes

False documents as a field of study

See also

External links

Deception

Dissimulation

Camouflage

Disguise appearance

Dazzle

Simulation

Mimicry

Fabricate

Attract

See also

References

Fraud

English Law

Known and alleged fraudsters and various forms of fraud

See also

Forgery

Topics in forgery

References

See also

External links

Albrecht Dürer

Early life in Nuremberg

First visit to Italy

Return to Nuremberg

Second visit to Italy

Nuremberg and the masterworks

Journey to the Netherlands and beyond

Final years in Nuremberg

See also

External links

20th century

Overview

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

Wars and politics

Culture and entertainment

Disease and medicine

Natural resources and the environment

Significant people

World leaders

Scientists

Humanities

Business

Aerospace pioneers

Military leaders