Jehan Legac

The auction houses are placing bets, the galleries are split down the middle, and collectors are quietly rewriting what "authentic" means. A look at the numbers, the mood, and the artists caught in between.

On the covered gaze: from Byzantine icons to Jehan Legac's Vision Within. Texto en español | Texte en français Vision Within begins with a contradiction: a figure that faces you completely, and cannot see you at all. The eyes are covered, not erased, not absent, but deliberately obscured by a band of stitched brocade. That gesture, covering the eyes while the face remains forward, has a long history; it is older than painting. The blindfold as a sacred instrument In Byzantine iconography, the...

Attracting bidders from the US, Asia and beyond, our 20th and 21st Century Art auctions sold 96% by lot and 99% by value. Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 achieved $181.2 million, Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde realised $107.6 million and Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) sold for $98.4 million — all three masterpieces set new world auction records. The sheer scale of recent transactions is staggering. One piece of correspondence noted the significance of New York's $2.5...