DAMIEN HIRST - DAMIEN HIRST SMASHES AUCTION RECORD WITH £70.5M SALE

DAMIEN HIRST SMASHES AUCTION RECORD WITH £70.5M SALE

An auction of the artist Damien Hirst's work has fetched a record total of £70.5 million.

Hurst decided to place more than 200 items of his work up for auction at Sotheby's and the sale will continue today.

Included within the pieces sold yesterday were The Golden Calf – a bull in a tank of formaldehyde – which went for £9.2 million, The Kingdom – a tiger suspended in the same conditions – which eventually sold for £9.6 million and The Black Sheep with the Golden Horn which raised £2.6 million.

Hirst entitled the auction Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, and described it as "probably the most amazing show I've put on".

The £70.5 million total raised yesterday smashed the previous record sale of art sold from a single artist. In 1993 works by Picasso went for £11 million.