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The parable of The Golden Calf

Edie Lush

Wednesday, 24th September 2008

Edie Lush attends the record-breaking Sotheby’s sale of Damien Hirst’s artworks, and wonders whether it is all a metaphor for the recent madness of financial markets

Last Monday was a historic day. Lehman filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history; the insurance giant AIG teetered on the brink; the Dow had its worst day since 9/11 — and in Mayfair an extraordinary event occurred at which seemingly few of those present had even heard of the credit crunch.

Buyers and gawkers queued outside Sotheby’s to get in for the historic evening’s sale of works by Damien Hirst. Minutes after it began, auctioneer Oliver Barker’s hammer went down on the first painting — a triptych of butterflies, manufactured diamonds and household gloss paint on canvas. Entitled ‘Heaven Can Wait’, it went for £850,000; a good start, against an estimate of £300,000-500,000.

The event continued with a shark in formaldehyde entitled ‘The Kingdom’ selling above the estimated £4-6 million for £8.5 million (that’s £9.6 million including the buyer’s premium, which is Sotheby’s fee). Much-discussed Lot 13, ‘The Golden Calf’, sold towards the low end of its estimated range at only £9.2 million. Before he brought down the hammer, Barker asked the audience, ‘Are we going on? It is “The Golden Calf”...’

But if buyers balked at spending more on a pickled calf with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, the work still set a Hirst record and helped create a new all-time high for an auction of a single artist’s work. The sale that night of 56 works by Hirst raised £70.5 million. Picasso set the previous record for a single-artist auction in 1993. That sale, of 88 lots, totalled £11.3 million. In all, Hirst’s auction raised ten times what Picasso made — a second day of auctions having brought the total to £111 million.

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Harry Duckworth

September 28th, 2008 11:16am

A new all-time high? How can that be? There's only ever room for the one.

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