Review of the book The Scientist and the Forger: Probing a Turbulent Art World by Jehane Ragai

Magazine article, 2018

In 2015, Jehane Ragai, Professor Emerita at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, published the book, The Scientist and the Forger, which was very well received and attracted attention from the art community, as well as from the general public interested in the topic. A second edition of The Scientist and the Forger has now been published. In fact, the new book is much more than an updated version of the first edition.
While the first edition had a focus on the analytical techniques used for detecting forgeries, the new edition puts more attention on the authentication process as such, involving not only scientific evidence but also art connoisseurs' views and the provenance of the painting. In fact, with the analytical techniques now available, most "simple" forgeries can immediately be revealed, usually through detection of anachronistic pigments, as Ragai discusses in some detail in connection to a famous Jackson Pollock case.