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To: Swordmaker
> No one goes to a magician to determine if a Rembrandt or a Rodin work of art is a "fraud."

Agreed. But then, neither do they go to physicists, generally. A physicist might well be able to tell you that the wood or canvas is however many centuries old, and the paint is composed of X, just like Back Then; but he's likely to eb ill-equipped to tell you if it's a fraud. The best fraud detectors are those who are practised at it.

> produced ludicrous copies that only met one if any of the list of criteria established to successfully demonstrate duplication.

Amazing what traces the passage of centuries will erase.

> Magicians work by misdirection and engineering... not too useful when examining a static artifact.

Huh. I'm sure Harry Houdini might have some things to say about that.
201 posted on 04/24/2004 12:58:32 AM PDT by orionblamblam
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To: orionblamblam
But then, neither do they go to physicists, generally. A physicist might well be able to tell you that the wood or canvas is however many centuries old, and the paint is composed of X

Actually, they do. The physicist and the Chemists can tell a lot about the painting's provenance.
Huh. I'm sure Harry Houdini might have some things to say about that.

Are you channeling now, Orion? Erich Weiss (aka Harry Houdini) has been dead since Halloween, 1926. I doubt he can say much of anything. If you are referring to his exposure of frauds, he only exposed the "performance frauds" of the mystics and seers who claimed they could speak with the dead or allow others to do so.
Amazing what traces the passage of centuries will erase.

You have great faith. Please show me any other work of art in which ALL pigments, stains, or other image producing media have completely disappeared, leaaving no detectable trace, over any length of time.
202 posted on 04/24/2004 5:58:48 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tagline shut down for renovations and repairs. Re-open June of 2001.)
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