Evening Vening Session Of Beautiful Inside My Head Forever

EVENING VENING SESSION OF BEAUTIFUL INSIDE MY HEAD FOREVER

GROUND-BREAKING AUCTION OF NEW WORKS BY DAMIEN HIRST-REALISES £70.5 MILLION AT SOTHEBY’S LONDON, ABOVE THE HIGH ESTIMATE*

LONDON – In the wake of the enormous interest surrounding the 11-day exhibition for Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, a major auction of new works by Damien Hirst at Sotheby’s, unprecedented levels of pre-sale interest (the exhibition attracted no fewer than 21,000 viewers) translated into heated bidding tonight in a sale that realised £70,545,100/US$127,256,306/€88,851,244 — a sum not only exceeding the high estimate (est. £43.2-62.3 million) for the evening sale, but topping the low estimate for the entire two-day sale. The evening session ended to a sustained round of applause.

Damien Hirst said: “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!”

Cheyenne Westphal and Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s specialists in charge of the sale, said: “We want to thank Damien Hirst for the trust he has placed in Sotheby’s. He has provided us with one of the great experiences of our professional lives — to work on this historic sale.”

They continued: “Tonight’s was an extraordinary one-off sale and unique event, following fast on the heels of a similarly extraordinary pre-sale exhibition. Damien Hirst’s artwork and installation attracted crowds unprecedented for Sotheby’s London. The auction and exhibition have very clearly broadened the market place for Damien Hirst’s work, which is a very significant accomplishment. We had some remarkable successes this evening and we look forward to seeing this unprecedented level of interest continue through the sales tomorrow.”

Sale statistics:

• This evening’s sale comprised 56 lots, 54 of which sold during the auction (the remaining two in fact sold before the sale closed), with 96% sold by value – the second highest sold by value rate ever seen at a Sotheby’s London Contemporary Art auction.

• Tonight’s auction saw 3 lots sell for over £5 million and 18 lot sell for more than £1 million, with 2 lots selling for $10 million, 4 lots selling for over $5 million and 37 lots for more than $1 million.

Top lots:

• The Golden Calf (lot 13): calf, 18 carat gold, glass, goldplated steel, silicone and formaldehyde solution with Carrara marble plinth, made £10,345,250 (€13,029,797/ US$18,661,796) – establishing a new auction record for a work by the artist in sterling. (Previous record: £9,652,000 / US$ 19,075098 for Lullaby Spring – established at Sotheby’s London, June, 2007)

• The Kingdom (lot 5): tiger shark, glass, steel, silicone and formaldehyde solution with steel plinth, made £9,561,250 (€12,042,352/US$17,247,539) – more than double the high estimate of £4 – 6 million (€ 5,060,000-7,590,000 / US$7,900,000-11,850,000 )

• Fragments of Paradise (lot 51) stainless steel and glass with manufactured diamonds, made £5,193,250 (€6,540,876 / US$ 9,368,104) – around five times the pre-sale estimate of £1-1.5 million.

• Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (lot 46): glass, stainless steel, fish, fish skeletons, acrylic, MDF, paint and formaldehyde solution, sold for £2,953,250 (€3,719,605/$5,327,368)

• Memories of / Moments With You (lot 11): gold-plated steel and glass with manufactured diamonds, made £2,617,250 (€3,296,415/US$4,721,257 ) – more than double the high estimate of £800,000-1,200,000 (€ 1,020,000-1,520,000/US$ 1,580,000-2,370,000)

• The Black Sheep with Golden Horn, (lot 9): made £2,617,250 (€3,296,415/US$4,721,257)

Works sold to benefit charities:
Over the course of the two-day sale, five works are to be sold to benefit charities, two of which were offered this evening and both exceeded their pre-sale estimates by a wide margin:

• Lot 30, Beautiful Love Demelza Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold to benefit Demelza, Hospice Care for Children realised £769,250 against an estimate of £400,000-600,000.

• Lot 8, Beautiful Love Survival Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold in aid of Survival International, made £898,335 against an estimate of £400,000-600,000.

Three further works (two to benefit charities designated by Hirst and one to benefit the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) will be offered tomorrow.

New benchmarks set:

• First ever auction dedicated to the work of a single living artist.
• The largest exhibition of works by Damien Hirst ever staged.
• Tonight’s sale eclipsed the total for any previous auction dedicated to a single artist. Previous sales dedicated to a single artist included:

- The Collection of Stanley J. Seeger at Sotheby’s in 1993: 88 works by Pablo Picasso were offered
and the sale realised $20 million.
- The Man Ray Sale at Sotheby’s in 1995: 599 works were offered and the sale realised £4 million
($6.3 million).

• Record number of visitors to a pre-sale exhibition at Sotheby’s London: more than 21,000 people attended the 11-day view, which makes it the best-attended pre-sale exhibition ever staged at our London galleries, with over 4,500 people visiting on one day alone. (This also represents up to nearly 9 times the average number of visitors to a Contemporary Art auction exhibition at Sotheby’s London.)

• The pre-sale exhibition lasted 11 days: the longest pre-sale view at Sotheby’s London.
• For the first time at Sotheby’s London, the pre-sale exhibition was open to the public until midnight on one of the viewing days (on Saturday, September 13th).

• Record number of over-the-counter catalogues sales: almost 1,300 catalogues were purchased by visitors attending the exhibition (£50 per catalogue).

• All 13 galleries at Sotheby’s New Bond Street premises were given over to the contents of a single sale and the work of one living artist – a first in Sotheby’s 264 year history.

• The auction salerooms were filled to capacity with every single ticket (almost 700) – seated and standing – reserved.

• Sotheby’s brought a group of 14 Damien Hirst works in the sale to New Delhi, India, representing the first-ever exhibition of the artist’s work in India.

*Estimates do not include buyers premium