Even his fag ends sell as Hirst art auction hits £100 million

A bid of £950,000 for a zebra in formaldehyde called 1965, The Incredible Journey, was well below estimate - but took the running total well past the highest expectation for the entire sale with at least another hour to go.

The sale of new paintings, sculptures and installations at Sotheby's overturned some critics' predictions that Hirst, 43, had flooded the market.

The series of three sales, which started last night and concluded today, are unprecedented - no other living artist has dared cut out the middlemen and go straight to auction.

Hirst played snooker at the Groucho Club in Soho last night as half a mile away there was a bidding frenzy for his great auction.

"He couldn't make up his mind whether to have spaghetti carbonara or spaghetti bolognese," said Frank Dunphy, his agent. "I told him that, given what has happened, he could afford to have both. After all, it's been a lot of hard work and a stressful time."

Hirst succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. After just 51 lots of the 223 lots had been sold, the £65 million target for the sale was passed. His big risk of bypassing his dealers Jay Jopling at White Cube, Harry Blain at Haunch of Venison and Larry Gagosian in King's Cross paid off as a new auction record price was paid for a Hirst - £10,345,250 for an enormous nine-ton Charolais bull in a blue tank of formaldehyde, The Golden Calf. A tiger shark with wide open jaws, The Kingdom, made £9,561,250.

Hirst's nightmare about what might happen to these new works ("Lot 9, no bids. Lot 10, still no bids," he confessed last week) were swept away on Lot 1, a spin painting glued with butterflies and manufactured diamonds with a £300,000-£500,000 estimate. It was exactly the sort of work that maddens Hirst's critics - designed and painted by assistants, untouched and not even signed by him, "vacuous" according to majestic Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes.

Auctioneer Oliver Barker had barely lifted his hand when he was besieged by waving arms across the saleroom. Bidding sprinted so fast to £993,250 that Mr Barker was gasping the prices out.

The 656 ticketed bidders trounced the estimates on 40 of the 56 lots, handing a heavy loss to hedge funds that foresaw disaster and shorted Sotheby's shares last week.

Unexpectedly, the steepest price climbs came not on Hirst's well-known spins and spots, his pretty coloured pills in neat lines, but on new stuff. In minutes today, the contents of an ashtray-Hirst had artfully deposited on linen went for a hammer price of £70,000 - more than three times the highest estimate.

A unicorn in a glass case went for more than £2 million and one of Hirst's butterfly works doubled its estimate to go for £1.4 million.

The financial fairyland in Sotheby's was in sharp contrast to the cruel world outside. As the Evening Standard headlined the Wall Street collapse of Lehman Brothers, money fell from heaven as investors saw greater safety in Hirst and the contemporary art market than in ordinary securities.

But Sotheby's CEO Bill Ruprecht, over from New York, said: "This sale wasn't about money getting out of Wall Street, it was about Damien Hirst. We've had 22,000 visitors in the last week, many of them families with children. The simple truth is that people around the world find his art compelling."

Before the sales, Hirst, the richest artist in British history - richer than Van Dyck, Sir Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner - had already made more than £500 million.

He's 43, he's cut out the dealers who were taking 20 to 50 per cent on his sales and he's destined to get richer, faster. His market has expanded to buyers from India, China, Russia and the Middle East as well as from the US and UK.

Applause broke out last night when Fragments of Paradise, a giant case of manufactured diamonds, stormed up to £5.193 million. It went to a telephone bidder represented by Sotheby's best Russian speaker - the only hint as to the buyer's identity.

"I believe he [Hirst] doesn't mind money," said Mr Dunphy when asked if the £500 million was made by design or accident. "He can do very good things, like give it to charity, or pay his taxes, which is brilliant for the country."

Four charities will benefit from the sale. The Demelza Hospice Care for Children charity in south London will get more than £769,000 from one piece donated by Hirst, with nearly £900,000 going to the aid of Survival International for tribal peoples.

Hirst said: "I think the market is bigger than anyone knew. I love art and this proves I'm not alone. The future's great for everyone."