Damien Hirst Skips the Middleman
By COLIN GLEADELL
London

By the final fall of the gavel at Sotheby's sale of new works by Damien Hirst yesterday, the world's richest artist (reportedly worth more than $1 billion), was $172 million richer. That was the amount left from the $201 million total after subtracting Sotheby's commission and $6.2 million of charitable donations. But perhaps more important, Mr. Hirst was also comfortable in the knowledge he had made history.
Not only was it the largest single artist sale ever held, with 287 lots; it was a sale that courageously flouted the time-honored tradition in which galleries have had sole lien on the sale of an artist's latest works.

Mr. Hirst has always been his own man. He bypassed the gallery system with the landmark Freeze warehouse exhibition 20 years ago, and has avoided binding contracts with his galleries, White Cube and Gagosian, since. He is on record as a critic of high gallery commission rates on sales, up to 50% for most artists or as little as 20% for him, but his purpose here was, as he said, to "democratize" his market by giving buyers who might be sidelined by prestige-conscious gallery sales teams the opportunity to bid on the open market. The sale was also designed to open up his market to potential buyers who might never have thought of buying his work -- until, that is, they'd been zapped by the publicity machine.
While some artists may have sold directly at auction before, none have done so in such quantity or in such a blaze of publicity. Mr. Hirst's genius for promotion, well honed from his early association with advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, was never better deployed. The combination with the well-oiled marketing machinery of Sotheby's left no section of the media untouched. And widespread criticism of the commercial style of production, tailor-made to fit each floor and wall space throughout the Sotheby's building, only added fuel to the debate that raged around the auction.
There was also no doubting the risks involved, lending an air of drama to the whole occasion. Before this week's sale, more than 25% of Mr. Hirst's works offered at auction this year had failed to sell, and pundits predicted that the growing effects of the credit crunch could take their toll. A damaging though refuted report then appeared in the Art Newspaper that hundreds of his works still lay unsold in his galleries. And when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was announced on the morning of the sale, and stock markets plunged, it seemed that a humiliating public failure could have been a possibility.
But the art market once again proved that it can thrive, insulated from the turmoil of financial markets, and Mr. Hirst showed that his brand could reach parts of that market that others couldn't.
The pattern for the two-day sale was set on Tuesday evening. Outside the front entrance, the journalist and broadcaster Ben Lewis was interviewing the ticket-only crowd as they lined up to enter. Mr. Lewis had been banned from attending the sale (a first for Sotheby's) because of a deeply cynical and sometimes naïve article in the Evening Standard about the contemporary art market as a confidence trick.
Most of the well-heeled crowd had come just to watch what promised to be an extraordinary spectacle, a performance artwork in itself. This was an event that was going to sort out the market traditionalists, with their taste for rarity and the historically significant, from the brash new global billionaires for whom brand status is more important.
At the sale, though multiple bids were made on most lots, three buyers dominated. Jay Jopling, of London's White Cube gallery, set the pace on the first lot, buying a butterfly painting triptych, "Heaven Can Wait," for £993,250 ($1.8 million), nearly double the high estimate. He then went on to buy three more lots for his clients. For "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow," a glass tank with fish skeletons floating in formaldehyde, he outbid rival London dealer Anthony d'Offay, paying £2.9 million -- within the estimate. Altogether he picked up four lots for a total £6.7 million. He wasn't deserting Mr. Hirst in his renegade auction adventure.
Mr. Hirst's other main dealer, the Gagosian Gallery, was less active -- bidding sporadically and acquiring just one lot. Rumors that the two dealers were offered an incentive percentage of sale proceeds to support the sale were hotly denied by both Sotheby's and Mr. Hirst's company, Science.
The biggest buyer in terms of lots was Sotheby's Russian-speaking Alina Davey from the private client services department. She bought nine lots and spent £12.9 million, presumably for Russian clients.
But the biggest spender -- bidding over the telephone and said by industry insiders to be Christie's owner, the keen Hirst collector Francois Pinault -- paid £13.2 million for three lots. The most expensive, "The Golden Calf," a 20-ton calf with 18-karat-gold hooves and horns in a formaldehyde glass tank, was perhaps the most symbolic work in the sale, representing as it does the idolatrous worship of money.
After the auction, New York dealer Alberto Mugrabi, who bid on several lots but could buy only one -- an assemblage of cigarette stubs for £121,250 -- suggested that the next day's headlines should read "Hirst Up. Lehman Brothers Down."
Amid all the back-slapping, whistling and cheering (mainly, it has to be said, from Sotheby's employees) there was little time to ponder that estimates had been set about 30% lower than retail according to the London trader and art-fund manager Micky Tiroche. While half the lots had sold above those estimates, just as many had not. For those who were checking against gallery prices, more than a handful of works had sold at relative bargain levels.
The following morning, the spirit of ebullience continued in the room as every lot was sold. Auctioneer Oliver Barker, who had suggested the whole event to Mr. Hirst two years previously, was awarded a pair of symbolic virgin-white gloves.
Again, a large number of lots sold below estimate. "The Incredible Journey," a zebra in a formaldehyde tank, sold for £1.1 million when at least £2 million had been expected. "The Broken Dream," another formaldehyde work featuring a calf's head, sold to White Cube for £505,250 -- well below its £600,000 low estimate. But just as many works took off. "Ascended," a butterfly painting in a new gridlike configuration for Mr. Hirst, tripled its estimate to sell for £2.3 million.
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's world-wide head of contemporary art, believes the achievement of the Hirst sale is unique, and places the artist firmly among the greats of the postwar era. "If you compare Hirst with Jeff Koons, for instance, both artists make desirable objects with global appeal," he says. "But Hirst's output is larger, and very controlled. He promised us an astonishing new body of work for this auction and he produced it -- on time." Mr. Koons produces less and does not work to time schedules.
Warhol would not have held such a sale because he was not as successful in his lifetime, and because the auction market was not so developed then. But there are similarities, says Mr. Meyer. Both artists produced multiple series of similar works that look repetitive at first. But when you look closer you find there are rarities within those series. "Did you know there are only 12 metal butterfly paintings, three of which were in this sale?" asks Mr. Meyer. "One day that rarity will make them even more sought after, just as we are now seeking out rare Warhol electric-chair or Jackie paintings from a series. I also believe the provenance of this sale will be seen as an important one in the future. It was Damien Hirst at his most ambitious."
Most ambitious as an artist -- and most skillful as a market maker.
Mr. Gleadell writes a weekly column on the art markets in the Daily Telegraph.

******************************************************************
Does Hirst Auction Point to Bull Market for Art?
By KELLY CROW
British artist Damien Hirst's bold strategy to bypass his galleries and take his art to auction paid off Monday night when Sotheby's in London sold £70.5 million ($127 million) of his pickled animals and polka-dotted canvases.


Getty Images

The sale, which surpassed its £62.3 million high estimate, underscored the resilience of the art market despite woes in the broader financial markets.
The artist broke his own record at auction when his pickled bull with golden horns, "The Golden Calf," sold to a telephone bidder for £10.3 million. In June 2007, one of his medicine cabinets, "Lullaby Spring," sold for £9.6 million at Sotheby's in London.
A tiger shark floating in a black steel tank, called "The Kingdom," also inspired a lengthy battle between a pair of telephone bidders, eventually selling for £9.5 million, well over its £6 million high estimate.

Damien Hirst's Auction Gamble
2:41
Damien Hirst, who produces the most expensive artwork of any living artist, will test the current market when his latest works go on sale at auction next week at Sotheby's. (Sept. 12)
All but two of the 56 artworks offered during the evening sale found buyers, with the sale achieving 96% of its potential value. At least three lots sold for more than £5 million, and 18 lots sold for more than £1 million.
The result validated Mr. Hirst's populist assertion that art collectors might want to join in the bidding for his new work rather than buy from his art dealers. The direct-to-auction concept was considered risky in part because no living artist had ever tried it before. A swath of unsold works might also have undermined buyers' confidence in the overall contemporary-art market.
But art buyers evidently felt safe putting their money into Mr. Hirst's work: Sotheby's says at least 21,096 people viewed the sale's offerings in person in the past two weeks, with 650 attendees packing into its salesroom last night. Sotheby's had shopped the works across several continents to give the sale a blockbuster atmosphere.
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com