Art brings home the Bacon in £38m sale

The artist's tortured Study for a Bullfight No 1, Second Version sold for £22,111,517 and his Self-Portrait (1969) went for £15,915,039.

It was the first time that a British artist has topped a contemporary art sale in America.

In another night of records, Sotheby's took its highest auction total of £152million for 71 pictures, which follows the £156 million splashed out by bidders at Christie's on Tuesday night.

The art market party rolled on to ever greater excess with a dozen records set for individual artists - the most notable last night for the US king of kitsch, Jeff Koons.

His gleaming nine foot-tall steel magenta Hanging Heart, a huge painted Valentine hung from the ceiling by a simulated yellow ribbon in bronze, sold for £11,335,033, far and away the highest price ever given at auction for a living artist.

That sum eclipses anything paid for Lucian Freud, who on Tuesday at Christie's became the world's most expensive living artist when his portrait of his daughter Isobel asleep in bed with her husband realised a record £9.35 million.

But Freud's place at the head of the roll of honour lasted just 24 hours as the art market boom pushed one record aside for another.

Both Bacons comfortably exceeded their estimates last night as Americans wisely deserted Wall Street and spent their weakened dollars on art.

Ten years ago, Bacon's highest auction price was £3.6 million.

Last May he peaked at £27 million for one of his series of screaming Popes and he is on his way to being ranked with Picasso, Klimt, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as a superstar of 20th-century art.

He is now priced far above even Matisse and Modigliani, who reached half his value in the autumn Impressionist and modern art sales last week.

Koons, 52, with much invention still ahead of him, is also on a seemingly limitless rise. He made his Valentine heart as a message to his young son by his porn-star ex-wife Ilona Staller.

After his divorce, Koons was estranged from the boy and made his Celebration series of artworks to express his love for him.

New York's art spree means that, by tonight, spending at Sotheby's and Christie's will total about £800 million for an unrivalled fortnight of sales.

Art is doing everything for investors that the stock market is not.

Last week saw Christie's score the world's second highest auction total of $395 million (£192 million) for Impressionist and Modern pictures.

An accident at Sotheby's $269 million (£130 million) auction when a stale Van Gogh and four tough and ugly pictures from the Picasso estate failed to sell, has been brushed aside in this week's frenzy of money.

New York analysts and newspapers argued that the boom which has raged since 2005 was over and Sotheby's shares fell 38 per cent on Monday.

After last night, they are likely to go straight back up again.