The word on the street and the day’s auction carnage…

ST REPORTING FROM LONDON FOR DAY II OF DAMIEN HIRST’S SOTHEBY’S AUCTION:
Despite the dark pall cast over day two of DAMIEN HIRST’s massive “Beautiful Inside My head Forever” auction at SOTHEBY’S by the weekend’s Lehman financial crisis and tomorrow’s impending AIG disaster, anxious collectors bid big on the remaining 177 art lots like their social reputations depended on it to bring the sale’s two-day total to a whopping £111.4 million, or $200.8 million USD. Personal preference seemed to reign supreme throughout today’s two uneven sales sessions with lots like Hirst’s preserved unicorn piece, “The Dream,” selling for $7,284,408 USD, way over its $533,005 USD high estimate, while his pickled zebra piece, “The Incredible Journey,” sold for only $3,375,701 USD, finishing just below its low-end $3,553,369 USD million sales estimate. The biggest sellers of the day, however, were the artist’s massive array of various butterfly and spin art paintings, perennial favorites in Hirst’s aesthetic arsenal that he’s vowed to discontinue following this auction. To emphasize that point, the auctioneer even chided the crowd with the motivational come-on, “They’re running out, ladies and gentlemen.” The highlight of the day’s incredibly long, monotonous proceedings came not when Damien Hirst’s image appeared magically on the face of the auction pedestal, but when a delirious attendee began bidding “six pounds!, six pounds!” on a £100,000+ auction lot before being dragged away by earpiece-wearing security guards, babbling incoherently. Already a billionaire and the “biggest dollar earner in the history of art,” according to his manager Frank Dunphy, Hirst’s most important work of conceptual art seems to be within a hair’s breadth of reaching completion. The piece in question, you ask? His bank account. HAVE A LOOK:
The big picture…

Waiting for the hammer to fall…

Damien’s prettiest pony…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Art & Commerce, Art Crimes, Damien Hirst, London, News, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.