English

Alternative forms

• de-attribution

Noun

deattribution ‎(plural deattributions)

1. Discontinuance of attributing a work of art or literature, etc. to a particular creator, especially in a case where a work is reassigned from a prominent creator to a lesser or unknown creator.
   • 1986 Sept. 30, Douglas C. McGill, "Met to Relabel 2 of Its ‘Rembrandts’," New York Times (retrieved 25 Sep 2015):

     Deattribution of Rembrandt paintings has been going on among art historians for decades, constantly winnowing a corpus inflated by the 17th- and 18th-century practice of regarding many works simply in Rembrandt's style as "by the master."

   • 2006, W. Stanley Taft Jr. and James W. Mayer, The Science of Paintings, ISBN 9780387217413, p. 9 (Google preview):

     Attributions, deattributions, and reattributions are often more easily made after reviewing x-radiographs, infrared reflectograms, dendrochronological data, and pigment analyses.

   • 2009 April 24, "A Dead Soldier (17th century), Anonymous Italian," Independent (UK) (retrieved 25 Sep 2015):

     [I]n the world of art, authors are always dying off. Works that were previously assigned to a known name, works that were among the most famous, find themselves stranded in anonymity. The process is called de-attribution.

Related terms

• deattribute