Damien Hirst’s sale breaks auction records

By David Clarke

LONDON (Reuters) – Damien Hirst smashed the record for an auction dedicated to a single artist, selling 54 new works on Monday for 70.55 million pounds in a sale that underlined the resilience of the high-end art market.

The British artist’s “The Golden Calf”, a bull in a tank of formaldehyde with its head crowned by a gold disc, sold for 10.35 million pounds, a record at auction for one of the contemporary art world’s most bankable stars, Sotheby’s said.

The Hirst auction came after Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the world’s top auction houses, raised more than $1 billion (558 million pounds) in London art sales this summer — and was held the same day the fourth largest U.S. investment bank collapsed.

Auction houses have been appealing to “recession-proof” buyers in the Middle East and Russia, where record oil prices have boosted already massive fortunes, along with the super-rich in emerging economies such as India.

“I think the market is bigger than anyone knows. I love art and this proves I’m not alone, and the future looks great for everyone!” said Hirst.

The 43-year-old artist stunned the art world when he said 223 new works would be auctioned by Sotheby’s in the first mass sale of its kind by a major artist.

By taking them straight to an auction house, Hirst is cutting out the art galleries that he says take an “extortionate” amount of the proceeds, or up to 50 percent.

Works on offer in the two-day sale, called “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, were created over the past two years.

The 70.55 million pound total for Monday evening surpassed the high estimate of 62.3 million pounds and the previous record for an auction by a single artist — $32 million raised in 1993 at the sale of 88 paintings by Picasso.

TIGER SHARK

Works sold on Monday included Hirst’s trademark animals in formaldehyde — a shark, the bull, a sheep — along with butterfly, spin and spot paintings. Another 167 new pieces will be auctioned on Tuesday.

Sotheby’s said it took 14 works to India for Hirst’s first exhibition there, while some 21,000 people visited the 11-day preview in London — the auction house’s most well-attended pre-sale exhibition in the British capital.

“The Kingdom”, a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde — a smaller version of “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — fetched 9.56 million pounds, way above the estimate of 4-6 million pounds.

“Fragments of Paradise”, made of stainless steel and glass with manufactured diamonds, sold for 5.19 million pounds, exceeding its guide price of 1-1.5 million pounds. “Afterlife”, a butterfly painting, went for 1.39 million pounds, double the 500,000-700,000 pound estimate.

Hirst’s previous record at auction for a single piece was his medicine cabinet, “Lullaby Spring”, which sold for 9.65 million pounds in 2007.

He has been unapologetic about mixing creativity with cash despite accusations he is producing only for profit. One commentator referred to the auction as a “clearance” sale.

He has argued that if the sale raises tens of millions of pounds, at a time when the art market is booming despite economic gloom elsewhere, it may attract more people to art.

Hirst has come under fire from some top critics, including Australia’s Robert Hughes, who has called his art “tacky” and “absurd”.

The sale coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Freeze exhibition in London which launched the careers of Hirst and some of his fellow “Young British Artists”.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)