n., pl., -ies.
- The act of forging, especially the illegal production of something counterfeit.
- Something counterfeit, forged, or fraudulent.
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forgery
American Heritage Dictionary:
for·ger·y |
n., pl., -ies.
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Featured Videos:
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
forgery |
For more information on forgery, visit Britannica.com.
Barron's Banking Dictionary:
Forgery |
Alteration of a document or negotiable instrument with intent to defraud; signing another's signature to a document with intent to defraud. See also Altered Check; Raised Check.
Roget's Thesaurus:
forgery |
Antonyms by Answers.com:
forgery |
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
forgery |
A sharp way of raising some of the problems of aesthetic theory is to ask why fakes and forgeries, however good, are typically valued much less highly than originals. The difference may seem to be a snobbish and insignificant by-product of the art market, or on the other hand a manifestation of the belief that a work done by a superior artist will, somewhere, have a significance greater than that of an inferior one, however similar it may currently seem to our eyes.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
forgery |
in art
in criminal law
in criminal law
forgery, in art, the false claim to authenticity for a work of art.
The Nature of Forgery
Because the provenance of works of art is seldom clear and because their origin is often judged by means of subtle factors, art forgery has always been commonplace. The sorts of deception involved include the complete production of a work that is passed off as being of a particular period, false claims regarding materials or workmanship, the piecing together of old fragments to simulate antiquity, the selling as originals of faithful copies that were not intended to be taken as anything but copies, and the false attribution of minor works to great masters. Forgeries are distinguished from falsifications, which include copies or even mechanical reproductions not initially meant to pass for the original, in that they are intended to defraud. These sorts of deceptions, made for financial gain, reflect prevailing taste and fashion, conventions in collecting, and current modes of art criticism.
See also counterfeiting.
Early History
Art falsification and forgery are ancient endeavors, but they were not so widely practiced before the collection of antiques came into vogue (see antique collecting) or before the cult of artistic personalities developed. Still, many minor Greek sculptors carved the signatures of Phidias and Praxiteles into their works that were made for export to Roman collectors. During the Renaissance Michelangelo himself, according to Vasari, carved a marble cupid, buried it for a time to give it an antique look, and sold it as an ancient sculpture. Ghiberti produced ancient-looking Greek and Roman medals in imitation of aesthetic styles he admired.
The Proliferation of Forgery
Large numbers of forgeries of antique works have invariably followed directly after great archaeological discoveries, e.g., the 18th-century unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum resulted in quantities of forged Roman paintings. Museums are among the principal victims of such handiwork: Pietro Pennelli's fake antique terra-cotta pottery found its way into the Louvre in 1873. Copies of Parthenon sculpture in England were determined as forgeries by Bernard Ashmole in 1954. A bronze horse, purportedly an antique Greek work, and an Etruscan warrior are two famous cases of forged sculpture brought to light at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Thousands of lesser faked objects are displayed in private and public collections. Museum authorities, in an effort to avoid being duped, are sometimes overzealous in their rejection of works that are difficult to integrate within accepted concepts of stylistic development. The Fayum portraits of early Christian Egypt were just such a case. There is, of course, some opposition to revealing known frauds; an object's reputation may stand in an uneasy limbo of doubted authenticity for years.
The 20th cent., with its ever-increasing emphasis on the financial value of works of art, has witnessed the discovery of two master forgers. Alceo Dossena of Cremona (1878-1936) was a sculptor expert in the carving techniques of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. His work was of the highest quality and not made in deliberate imitation of the styles he admired; rather he was inspired by them to the creation of his own, similar works. His Virgin and Child in the 15th-century Florentine manner is at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hans van Meergeren (1884-1947), a mediocre Dutch painter, claimed to have discovered several lost paintings by Vermeer. He sold them to Hermann Goering and was put on trial after World War II for selling national treasures. Van Meergeren proved himself innocent by painting another "Vermeer" in his jail cell.
Controversy has often raged over the authenticity of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre; each of five other versions has been credited with being the original. The number of forgeries of the works of Corot and of the American painters A. P. Ryder and R. A. Blakelock greatly exceeds these artists' actual productions.
Detecting Forgeries
A forger often unconsciously produces a confusion of styles or subtly accents elements reflecting contemporary bias. A major example is the work passed off as Lucas Cranach's by the brilliant German forger F. W. Rohrich (1787-1834). He imbued these paintings with a touch of the Biedermeier aesthetic, prevalent in his own day, that later betrayed their falsity. The 19th-century Russian creator of the famous tiara of Saïtapharnes (Louvre), an engraved headdress in gold, supposedly a Scythian work of the 3d cent. B.C., borrowed freely from motifs displayed in 19th-century publications concerning recent excavations.
Despite modern technological advances, much forgery remains impervious to detection by other than empirical means. Critical expertise in the styles and aesthetics of various periods is still the principal tool of the authenticator. Artistic clumsiness, a jumble of styles or motifs, and a discernible emphasis on the aesthetic values of the forger's own day more consistently reveals fakery than does technical analysis. Nonetheless, such contemporary tools as X-ray, infrared, and ultraviolet photography are employed to reveal pentimento and overpainting.
In addition, craquelure may be microscopically examined. Chemical analysis and carbon-14 dating may provide relatively inconclusive testimony when ancient materials have been used. As scientific techniques grow more sophisticated, so do the techniques of forgers. The discovery of forgery results in a curious phenomenon-a work of art may be considered a priceless masterpiece one day and worthless the next. Without proof of origin its valuation as false or authentic is at best a matter of subjective human judgment.
Bibliography
See P. B. Coremans, Van Meegeren's Faked Vermeers and De Hooghs (tr. 1949); B. Ashmole, Forgeries of Ancient Sculpture (1961); O. Kurz, Fakes (2d ed. 1967); A. Rieth, Archaeological Fakes (1967, tr. 1970); J. Koobatian, ed., Faking It: An International Bibliography of Art and Literary Forgeries, 1949-1986 (1987); T. Hoving, False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes (1996).
forgery, in criminal law, willful fabrication or alteration of a written document with the intent to injure the interests of another in a fraudulent manner. The crime may be committed even though the fraudulent scheme fails. The forgery of government obligations-e.g., money, bonds, postage stamps-constitutes the separate offense of counterfeiting. Typical examples of forgery are making insertions or alterations in otherwise valid documents and appending another's signature to a document without permission. It is, of course, lawful to sign another's signature as his attorney or representative so long as there is no plan to commit fraud. Most instances of forgery occur in connection with instruments for the payment of money. The crime may also concern documents of title, e.g., deeds, or public documents, including birth and marriage certificates. In the United States forgery ordinarily is a state crime; but to send forged documents through the post office may constitute the federal crime of mail fraud.
West's Encyclopedia of American Law:
Forgery |
This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.
The creation of a false written document or alteration of a genuine one, with the intent to defraud.
Forgery consists of filling in blanks on a document containing a genuine signature, or materially altering or erasing an existing instrument. An underlying intent to defraud, based on knowledge of the false nature of the instrument, must accompany the act. Instruments of forgery may include bills of exchange, bills of lading, promissory notes, checks, bonds, receipts, orders for money or goods, mortgages, discharges of mortgages, deeds, public records, account books, and certain kinds of tickets or passes for transportation or events. Statutes define forgery as a felony. Punishment generally consists of a fine or imprisonment, or both. Methods of forgery include handwriting, printing, engraving, and typewriting. The related crime of uttering a forged document occurs when an inauthentic writing is intentionally offered as genuine. Some modern statutes include this crime with forgery.
Perhaps the most famous case of forgery in the twentieth century took place in 1983 with the "discovery" of the Hitler diaries. The diaries supposedly contained passages written by German dictator Adolf Hitler between 1932 and 1945. Gerd Heidemann, a German reporter for Stern magazine, had claimed the writings as genuine and sold them. He had obtained them from Konrad Kujau, a Stuttgart dealer in military memorabilia and documents. The magazines Newsweek and Paris Match, along with other media, paid more than $5 million for the documents. Major news sources around the world quickly published major stories detailing the historical information that the diaries allegedly contained. Investigative experts from around the world later conducted forensic examinations on the diaries and found the documents to be fake. Kujau then admitted forging the diaries, and news sources immediately retracted their coverage. Both Kujau and Heidemann were sentenced to four and a half years in a German prison — but not before Kujau embarrassed the media even further by forging Hitler autographs for spectators at his circuslike trial.
In the United States, the Mormon Bible forgeries resulted in more extreme consequences. Beginning in the early 1980s, Mark Hofmann, a disillusioned Salt Lake City Mormon and part-time dealer in historical documents, forged documents of major importance to Mormon history. He sold most of the creations to the Mormon Church and to others interested in Mormon religious history. Hofmann reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from his fraud. His boldest forgery, the White Salamander letter, cast doubt on the credibility of the Mormon Church's founder, Joseph Smith. In this letter, Hofmann portrayed Smith as a dabbler in folk magic and the occult, which greatly distressed the Mormon community. When individuals within Hofmann's ring of buyers raised doubts about the authenticity of one of his later creations, Hofmann murdered one buyer and the spouse of another before their suspicions became public.
Hofmann was charged with murder and fraud. Prosecutors relied on expert testimony regarding the authenticity of the documents. When the experts declared that the documents were worthless, Hofmann's attorneys offered to plea bargain on the counts of forgery and second-degree murder. The prosecution agreed to negotiate the charges to avoid an embarrassing trial for the Mormon Church. Hofmann pleaded guilty to murder. In January 1988, the Utah Board of Pardons sentenced Hofmann to life in prison without parole.
Most forgeries are less sensational than those in the Hitler diaries and Mormon Bible cases. Common forgery usually involves manufacturing or tampering with documents for economic gain. The intent to defraud remains essential.
Counterfeiting, often associated with forgery, is a separate category of fraud involving the manufacture, alteration, or distribution of a product that is of lesser value than the genuine product.
Random House Word Menu:
categories related to 'forgery' |
- Crimes, Criminals, and Civil Offenders - forgery: act of making, altering, or counterfeiting a document or signature with intent to deceive
- Painting Tools and Techniques - forgery: copy of an artwork, intended to pass as an original
- Books and Pages - forgery: fraudulently made or altered document
- Falsehood, Pretense, and Exaggeration - forgery: fabricating or altering of a document for purpose of fraud; document so produced
- Crimes - forgery: fraudulent imitation of documents or signatures
Rhymes:
forgery |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Forgery |
"Forger" redirects here. For the Soviet aircraft, see Yakovlev Yak-38.
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| Criminal law |
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| Part of the common law series |
| Element (criminal law) |
| Actus reus · Mens rea Causation · Concurrence |
| Scope of criminal liability |
| Complicity · Corporate · Vicarious |
| Inchoate offenses |
| Attempt · Conspiracy · Solicitation |
| Offence against the person |
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Assault · Battery |
| Crimes against property |
| Arson · Blackmail · Burglary Embezzlement · Extortion False pretenses · Larceny Possessing stolen property Robbery · Theft |
| Crimes against justice |
| Compounding · Misprision Obstruction · Perjury Malfeasance in office Perverting the course of justice |
| Defenses to liability |
| Defense of self Defence of property Consent · Diminished responsibility Duress · Entrapment Ignorantia juris non excusat Infancy · Insanity Intoxication defense Justification · Mistake (of law) Necessity · Loss of Control (Provocation) |
| Other common law areas |
| Contracts · Evidence · Property Torts · Wills, trusts and estates |
| Portals |
| Criminal justice · Law |
For the process of shaping metal by localized compressive forces, see Forging. For other uses, see Forgery (disambiguation).
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or currency is more often called counterfeiting. But consumer goods may also be counterfeits if they are not manufactured or produced by the designated manufacture or producer given on the label or flagged by the trademark symbol. When the object forged is a record or document it is often called a false document.
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, meaning "falsify."
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 rumor or a genuine object planted in a concocted situation, may substitute for a forged physical object.
The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery. Forgery is one of the techniques of fraud, including identity theft. Forgery is one of the threats addressed by security engineering.
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 originally by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse.
A special case of double forgery is the forging of Vermeer's paintings by Han van Meegeren, and in its turn the forging of Van Meegeren's work by his son Jacques van Meegeren.
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Contents
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England and Wales
See English criminal law#Forgery, personation and cheating
Documentary art
Before the invention of photography, people commonly hired painters and engravers to "re-create" an event or a scene. Artists had to imagine what to illustrate based on the information available to them about the subject. Some artists added elements to make the scene more exotic, while others removed elements out of modesty. In the 18th century, for example, Europeans were curious about what North America looked like and were ready to pay to see illustrations depicting this faraway place. Some of these artists produced prints depicting North America, despite many having never left Europe.
In popular culture
- The 1839 novel by Honoré de Balzac, Pierre Grassou, concerns an artist who lives off forgeries.
- The Orson Welles documentary F for Fake concerns both art and literary forgery. For the movie Welles intercut footage of Elmyr de Hory, an art forger, and Clifford Irving, who wrote an "authorized" autobiography of Howard Hughes that had been revealed to be a hoax. While forgery is the ostensible subject of the film, it also concerns art, film making, storytelling and the creative process.
- In the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the real story of Frank Abagnale, a con man who stole over $2.5 million through forgery, imposture and other frauds, which are dramatized in the film. His career in crime lasted six years from 1963 to 1969.
Topics in forgery
- Archaeological forgery
- Archaeoraptor
- Discoveries of Shinichi Fujimura
- James Ossuary
- Piltdown Man
- Moses Shapira
- Tiara of Saitapharne, Louvre
- Shepton Mallet, Chi-Rho amulet
- The Lady of Elx saw a controversy circa 1995 regarding its authenticity. Recently (2005), the Spanish National Research Council concluded in a research that the pigmentation was, in fact, from ancient times.
- See also Kensington Runestone controversy
- Drake's Plate of Brass
- Sinaia lead plates
- Art forgery
- Tom Keating
- Eric Hebborn
- Elmyr de Hory
- Zhang Daqian
- Dürer's imitators
- Camille Corot's imitators
- Han van Meegeren's Vermeers
- Jacques van Meegeren's fakes of Han van Meegeren's work
- Michelangelo's Cupid
- Etruscan terracotta warriors, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Rospigliosi Cup or The 'Cellini Cup'
- Samson Ceramics forgeries/reproductions
- Black Admiral
- Currency Forgery
- Counterfeit money
- Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group
- Counterfeit Coin Bulletin
- Counterfeit United States currency
- Fake denominations of United States currency
- William Chaloner (died 1699 at Tyburn), forger, coiner, coin clipper and counterfeiter,
- Catherine Murphy (counterfeiter) (died 1789) the last woman to be executed by burning.
- 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
- The Book of the Zohar, a primary text of medieval Kabbalah, was written by a 16th century Spanish Rabbi but attributed to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, an ancient sage of the Second Temple period. It was widely accepted as genuine until the advent of modern scholarship.
- The Salamander Letter, which offered an alternative account of Joseph Smith's finding of the Book of Mormon, written by master forger Mark Hofmann.
- Jack the Ripper's Diary
- Clifford Irving's Howard Hughes autobiography
- Charles Weisberg
- False documents
- Yellowcake Forgery
- Mark Hofmann
- James Maybrick
- Donation of Constantine
- Vinland map
- Dossiers Secrets, the document forgeries planted in the Bibliothèque nationale de France that were developed into Holy Blood, Holy Grail etc.
- Identity document forgery
- Musical Forgery (Music allegedly written by composers of past eras, but actually composed later by someone else)
- W. A. Mozart, "Adélaïde" concerto for violin (by Marius Casadesus)
- G. F. Handel, Viola Concerto (by Henri Casadesus)
- J. C. Bach, Cello Concerto in C minor (by Henri Casadesus)
- Valentin Strobel, Concerto (by François-Joseph Fétis)
- Works for lute by Sautscheck (by Roman Turovsky-Savchuk)
- Works for lute by Ioannes Leopolita (by Roman Turovsky-Savchuk)
- Works for baroque guitar by Antonio da Costa (by Paulo Galvao)
- "Kanzona" for lute by Francesco da Milano (by Vladimir Vavilov)
- A.Sychra, Elegy for guitar (by Vladimir Vavilov)
- Fritz Kreisler's works for violin attributed to other composers
- Joseph Haydn, 6 Keyboard Sonatas (by Winfried Michel)
- Joseph Haydn, Cello Concerto 'No 5' in C major, Hob VIIb:5 (by David Popper)
- Philatelic fakes and forgeries
- 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
- Political forgery - false documents used for purposes of black propaganda.
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- Zinoviev Letter
- Tanaka Memorial
- Ems Dispatch (actually more of a document altered by Otto von Bismarck in order to incite a war response from France against Germany)
- Killian documents (Memos critical of the United States National Guard service of President George W. Bush, now widely considered to be forgeries. See also Killian documents authenticity issues.)
See also
References
- Sources
- Cohon, Robert. Discovery & Deceit: archaeology & the forger's craft Kansas: Nelson-Atkins Museum, 1996
- Muscarella, Oscar. The Lie Became Great: the forgery of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, 2000
- "Imaginary Images" in Detecting the Truth: Fakes, Forgeries and Trickery at Library and Archives Canada
External links
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Look up forgery in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Bibliographies of archaeological forgeries, art forgeries etc
- Museum security mnetwork: sources of information on art forgery; with encyclopedic links
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This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Translations:
Forgery |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - falskneri, falsum
Français (French)
n. - faux, contrefaçon
Deutsch (German)
n. - Fälschung
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πλαστογράφηση, πλαστογραφία, πλαστός, κίβδηλο
Italiano (Italian)
falso, contraffazione
Português (Portuguese)
n. - falsificação (f)
Русский (Russian)
подделка, подложное
Español (Spanish)
n. - falsificación, adulteración
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - förfalskning, urkundsförfalskning (jur.)
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
伪造, 伪造物, 伪造罪
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 偽造, 偽造物, 偽造罪
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) تزوير
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - זיוף, דבר מזויף
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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- What is forgery?
- What is archaeological forgery?
- What kinds of forgery are there?
- How is forgery committed?
- What are the penalties for forgery?
- Why is a will forgery?
- What is the difference between utter forgery and forgery?
- What is the punishment for forgery?
- Who enforces forgery?
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