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About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.
The Museum of Hoaxes, founded by Alex Boese in 1997, is dedicated to promoting knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes. On our blog (to the left) we post about dubious-sounding claims — and whatever else strikes our fancy. But there's more to the museum than the blog. Check out our historical wing, which contains hundreds of articles about famous hoaxes, arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages right up to the present. Our Gallery of the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Ever celebrates that one day of the year devoted to pranks and practical jokes. In our forum, you can chat with other MoH members. And there's much, much more.
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Category: Art
Radioactive fallout helps authenticate art
Status: News
This news is about a month old, but it's new to me! Russian curator Elena Basner thinks she might have developed a foolproof way of determining whether a work of art was made before or after 1945. She tests the paint for radioactive isotopes. From the Times Online:The first nuclear bomb was successfully tested in July 1945 in New Mexico. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and three days later a second, more powerful bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. About 550 further explosions were carried out by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and France before most countries signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. China tested its first Bomb the next year.
Dr Basner’s team argue that this activity released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally. Tiny traces of these isotopes, caesium-137 and strontium-90, permeated soil and plant life and ended up in all postwar paintings through the natural oils used as binding agents for paints.
Any work of art purporting to be more than 63 years old that registers trace amounts of the two isotopes can therefore be definitively declared a fake, Dr Basner said.
Dr Basner’s team argue that this activity released isotopes into the environment that do not occur naturally. Tiny traces of these isotopes, caesium-137 and strontium-90, permeated soil and plant life and ended up in all postwar paintings through the natural oils used as binding agents for paints.
Any work of art purporting to be more than 63 years old that registers trace amounts of the two isotopes can therefore be definitively declared a fake, Dr Basner said.
The article goes on to point out that it would be possible for a forger to circumvent this method of detection by using paints and canvasses from the relevant period. I can understand how a forger could obtain an old canvas, but where would they get old paint?
Arboleda’s Assassination Exhibit
Status: Publicity stunt
Last week 28-year-old artist Yazmany Arboleda rented an empty storefront across the street from the New York Times building near Times Square to house his art exhibit. He then posted the title of the exhibit in the window: "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton / The Assassination of Barack Obama." It didn't take long for the secret service to show up and haul him in for questioning. Arboleda pleaded innocence, insisting he was referring to character assassination (by the media), not the murder-type of assassination, and the secret service released him a few hours later.
Arboleda insists that what he did was not a hoax, and I'd agree. Seems more like a publicity stunt to me. But he did engage in some media hoaxing a few months ago. From mediabistro.com:
Earlier this year, Arboleda crafted elaborate press releases, exhibition websites (complete with PhotoShopped installation shots), and even fake Chelsea art galleries where his Clinton and Obama shows were allegedly installed and hastily censored (Michael Musto fell for it, as did the news team at a Univision affiliate).
So, if I have this straight, Arboleda first invented a hoax exhibit. But last week he opened the exhibit for real. Some of the works on display included a gigantic representation of a black penis, and lettering on the wall that asks "Would you have sex with her? Neither would Bill." Obviously he's not one for subtlety. (Thanks, Bob)
Posted By: Alex | Date: Mon Jun 09, 2008 |
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Comments (1)
Category: Art, Hate Crimes/Terror, Politics
Category: Art, Hate Crimes/Terror, Politics
The World’s Largest Drawing
Status: Hoax
I'm very late with this one, but I thought it was worth including on the front page. I'll defer to David B. who posted about it a few days ago in the forum:A Swedish artist, Erik Nordenankar, recently made more that a few waves by claiming to have drawn the biggest picture in the world, a portrait of himself constructed of a single line 110 thousand km long.
Nordenanker said his amazing drawing had been sketched out, not in ink or paint, but by the movements of a special briefcase fitted with a GPS tracker. This case, he claimed, had been given to DHL along with a precise itinerary detailing the exact coordinates the package was to be taken to. Once it had completed its world-spanning round-trip, Nordenanker simply downloaded the route from the device’s memory and set about publicising his achievement.
Nordenanker said his amazing drawing had been sketched out, not in ink or paint, but by the movements of a special briefcase fitted with a GPS tracker. This case, he claimed, had been given to DHL along with a precise itinerary detailing the exact coordinates the package was to be taken to. Once it had completed its world-spanning round-trip, Nordenanker simply downloaded the route from the device’s memory and set about publicising his achievement.
Nordenankar now has a notice at the top of his website acknowledging the drawing was a hoax: "This is made as my graduation project in Advertising and Graphic Design at Beckmans College of Design. I think it's possible to realise the project for real, but due to my extremely limited budget (about 20 000 SEK = 3 370 USD) that was not possible. Therefore, I have realised the idea in a fictional way."
Some other links: An article in The Telegraph, Wired's article about the hoax, and Nordenankar's youtube video.
The question I have is, What is the world's largest drawing? I've found two possible candidates, after searching the Google News Archive:
1) In 1991 thousands of volunteers drew on an 800-pound, 7-mile-long-when-extended roll of paper. According to a July 11, 1991 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the plan was to completely roll out the paper and take an aerial photo of it when it was done, but I can't find any articles indicating if it was ever completed.
2) According to a Feb 4, 1996 article in the LA Times: "In a project cooked up for the Los Angeles bicentennial, [the artist Tom Van Sant] and a crew set up mirrors in the shape of an eye across a 1 1/2-mile stretch of the Mojave Desert to overexpose sensors in a satellite passing overhead. The result was the world's largest drawing." But again, I can't find any pictures of Van Sant's drawing.
The Museum of Fakes
Status: Fake Art
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the Museum of Fakes, located in southern Italy. (Thanks, Joe.) It's like a real-life Museum of Hoaxes, but devoted exclusively to art fakes. Thanks to a special arrangement with the Italian police, it has become the repository for all counterfeit works of art confiscated in Italy (and there are a lot of them). Its director, Salvatore Casillo, is a sociologist who has spent 20 years studying counterfeits. My favorite detail in the article:Casillo says that counterfeiting is a group effort involving a chain of corruption that ends at the unscrupulous seller's door. He tells of an instance when the Carabinieri went to the home of a collector to recover a fake Schifano. The owner insisted his was the real thing because the artist had been present at the purchase. As proof he showed the police a picture of himself with the painting, shaking hands with the man he identified as Schifano, who turned out to be an impersonator hired by the corrupt art gallery owner.
Related link: The Museum of Forgery, "a virtual institute dedicated to promoting an appreciation of the aesthetics of forgery."
Fake Road Signs
Status: Art/Prank
Fake road signs have been popping up around Frankston, Australia, amusing some and outraging others. The signs are said to be the work of a "mystery artist." From the Frankston Leader:The mystery Frankston signs have been carefully made to look like official road signs. Drivers have reported seeing them in Cranbourne-Frankston Rd, Langwarrin. Some think they are funny while others - and officials - aren't laughing...
Although VicRoads' media department thought the signs were "very amusing", its regional director Steve Brown was not laughing. The placement of inappropriate signs such as these was unsafe and illegal, he said. "VicRoads has arranged for them to be removed immediately and may request police to assist in identifying who was responsible."
Although VicRoads' media department thought the signs were "very amusing", its regional director Steve Brown was not laughing. The placement of inappropriate signs such as these was unsafe and illegal, he said. "VicRoads has arranged for them to be removed immediately and may request police to assist in identifying who was responsible."
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It reminds me of the Fake Road Sign Project that artists conducted in Lyon, France back in 2004 (with the official endorsement of the Lyon city government). The Lyon Sign Project used to be online at bopano.net, but that link now appears to be dead. A few of the Lyon signs can still be seen here, here, and here.
Related post: Welcome to Detroit.
Abortion as Art
Status: Undetermined
Yale undergraduate Aliza Shvarts' senior art project has created a little bit of controversy. She has apparently created "a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages." That's just lovely. (Already posted by whoeverur in the forum, but so bizarre it warrants being on the front page.)Shvarts insists that her project was not designed for "shock value." Funny. I would have thought it was designed precisely for shock value.
She also says that "she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages." I'm always puzzled about why people think that just because a drug is "herbal" it can't possibly be harmful.
The final display of the project will be like something out of a horror movie:
The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.
As word of Schvarts' project got around, Yale hurriedly released a statement assuring everyone that it was all just "creative fiction":
“Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages,” a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said in a statement sent by e-mail to reporters. “The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.”
But according to a follow-up report in the Yale Daily News, Sharvarts is still insisting that she really did what she initially claimed:
Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant. “No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”
My hunch is that Shvarts probably did conduct her bizarre project. But who can say for sure? Creating doubt seems to be the basic point of her project.
There's a long history of hoaxes and "art projects" involving reproduction, which is why I devoted an entire chapter to that subject in Hippo Eats Dwarf. The two that remind me most of Shvarts' project are Mary Toft, the woman who gave birth to rabbits, and Chrissy Caviar, the performance artist who claimed she harvested the eggs from her body and sold them as food.
The Art of Pierre Brassau
Status: Art Hoax
I received an email from Maria in Sweden who reports that when her mother recently passed away she became the owner of a painting by Pierre Brassau, the monkey artist. (See the article about Pierre Brassau in the hoaxipedia. To sum up the story: in 1964 a Swedish reporter placed some paintings drawn by a monkey in an art show, claiming they were the work of an avant-garde French artist, Pierre Brassau. After critics praised the paintings, he revealed the hoax.) Apparently Maria's mother had received the painting in 1970 as a gift and had kept it ever since.This is the first time I've ever seen one of Brassau's paintings, despite having searched for pictures of them in the past.
Maria seems to be interested in selling the painting. She's already contacted an auction house. I wouldn't mind owning it, but I'm sure it's worth far more than I can afford. I know that one of his paintings sold for $90 in 1964, which is at least $600 in today's money (or maybe as much as $1600 depending on how you calculate the rate of inflation).
Update:
Hitler Draws Disney
Status: Undetermined
First there was the Hitler Diary hoax. Now we may be witnessing the Hitler Disney hoax.
William Hakvaag, director of a Norwegian war museum, claims to have found sketches (shown above) of various Disney characters drawn by Adolf Hitler. He says that he found the paintings hidden inside another painting signed "A. Hitler" that he bought at an auction. Hakvaag feels 100% confident that the drawings are authentic Hitlers. The Telegraph reports:
Mr Hakvaag, who said he had performed tests on the paintings which suggested that they dated from 1940, said: "I am 100 per cent sure that these are drawings by Hitler. If one wanted to make a forgery, one would never hide it in the back of a picture, where it might never be discovered." The initials on the sketches, and the signature on the painting, matched other copies of Hitler's handwriting, he claimed.
"Hitler had a copy of Snow White," he said. "He thought this was one of the best movies ever made."
"Hitler had a copy of Snow White," he said. "He thought this was one of the best movies ever made."
If these are genuine, I assume they'll be worth a lot of money, since they'll appeal to collectors of both Disney and Nazi memorabilia. What a combination! But I'm very skeptical that they're genuine. The Nazi memorabilia market is notorious for being flooded with fakes. And even when Hitler was alive, forgers were creating fake works of art attributed to him. (Thanks, EBE)
Quick Links: Feb 14, 2008
Status: Miscellaneous
Guy convinces girl he's a vampire-werewolf hybridAn unusual, but apparently effective pickup strategy. The guy was later charged with statutory sexual assault since he was 19 and she was 15. To prove to police that he was a genuine vampire/werewolf, he showed them his canine teeth. The police pointed out to him that "all mammals, including humans, have canine teeth."
German museum discovers its Monet is a fakeThe clues: a retraced signature, it was painted over a drawing that was clearly not a Monet, and a "colourless substance" had been applied to make the painting look older.
Boston man receives postcard from 1929
Could this be the work of the Lost Postcard Rescue Department?
Kid who spotted the Titanic hoax photos nominated for journalism award
I posted about the hoax Titanic photos back in Aug 2007. It's nice for the kid to get an award.
Rogue Taxidermy
Status: Strange art
Nate Hill describes himself as a rogue taxidermist. He rummages through trash looking for dead animals: fish, dogs, cats, etc. Whatever he finds, he stitches together to form a bizarre new creature. From a recent AP article about him:"I'm totally self-taught," he said. "To put it simply, what I do is cut up the animals, I sew them together in a different way, and then I submerge them in rubbing alcohol to preserve them."
He considers himself a member of a loosely defined group of "rogue taxidermists" who sidestep the traditional craft of taxidermy that aims to make lifelike replicas by preserving and stuffing animal skins. Along with the garbage cans of Chinatown, he said gets most of his animals from hunters, roadkill and taxidermists...
Hill said he felt more like a "folk" artist, given his lack of formal training in the arts. His intent, he said, is similar to "the guy who sits in his basement and has his train set, and he has all the people and he makes mountains ... that's the kind of thing that I want, but I want to make it with real flesh."
He considers himself a member of a loosely defined group of "rogue taxidermists" who sidestep the traditional craft of taxidermy that aims to make lifelike replicas by preserving and stuffing animal skins. Along with the garbage cans of Chinatown, he said gets most of his animals from hunters, roadkill and taxidermists...
Hill said he felt more like a "folk" artist, given his lack of formal training in the arts. His intent, he said, is similar to "the guy who sits in his basement and has his train set, and he has all the people and he makes mountains ... that's the kind of thing that I want, but I want to make it with real flesh."
Nate is a star member of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, which describes itself as: "a veritable rout dedicated to a shared mandate to advocate the showmanship of oddities; espouse the belief in natural adaptation and mutation; and encourage the desire to create displays of curiosity."
They have some interesting items for sale in their gift shop, such as a 2-headed chick, a skinned squirrel head fridge magnet, and a frog eating human toes.