Damien Hirst This article is more than 15 years old£111m Damien Hirst total sets record for one-artist auction
This article is more than 15 years oldDespite his nightmares that nobody would bid for a single shark, unicorn or flying pig, Damien Hirst's trailblazing two-day auction at Sotheby's has made a total of £111m.
This is a record for a one-artist auction, and ten times the previous record total, which was set by an auction of Picasso's work in 1993.
This morning's session, at which all 80 lots were sold, made £24.3m, adding to Monday night's £70m.
Sotheby's refused to reveal their exact deal with the artist, but he will have done dramatically better than if he had sold through his regular galleries, which take commissions of up to 50%.
Lucian Freud's monumental 1995 portrait Big Sue - Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, was sold for £17.2m by Christie's in New York earlier this year and still holds the auction record for a single work for a living artist.
In the last decade, prices for contemporary art, boosted by city bonuses and new Russian and Middle Eastern buyers, have outstripped those for Old Masters, but those contemporary works were all sold by collectors, artists' estates, or galleries.
Hirst, now a global brand, was the first to take a vast purpose-made collection of his own works direct to auction.
Prices were erratic. Although all but five of the 223 lots were eventually sold, some went for well below their estimated totals. The Incredible Journey, his first zebra in a tank, went for £1.1m, just under half the lowest estimate.
There was much more enthusiasm for the archetypal Hirsts - the spots, spins and butterflies - which the artist hinted he is now tiring of.
Bidding was noticeably brisker under the £500,000 mark. Over that price, only the anonymous phone bidders were left in the game.
The Hirst that went for the highest price, the Golden Calf, fell short of the highest £13m estimates, going under the hammer for £10.3m last night.
This was an auction record for the artist, but it almost seemed disappointing given the predictions that he might beat the US pop artist Jeff Koons, whose Balloon Flower sold in June for £12.9m, to second place in the ranks of prices paid for a single work by a living artist.
Nevertheless, Hirst is unlikely to feel disappointed - he has made more money in two days than all the artists in the National Gallery earned in a lifetime.
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