Featured in Record Setting Auction, Hirst Spin Painting Tests His Market at Phillips This Week

Oliver Barker, who first organized the sale of the contents of Hirst’s Pharmacy restaurant, conducting the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale in front of the work to be sold at Phillips this week

Colin Gleadell reminds us that this week provides a gauge of the Hirst market as one of the works from the now-infamous Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale is back on the block at Phillips on Wednesday.

As interest in Hirst’s Venice exhibition has broken in the press, the state of his market will come under further scrutiny:

Beautiful Mider Intense Cathartic Painting (with Extra Inner Beauty), a seven-foot square spin painting with a skull at the centre, carries an estimate of £350,000 to £450,000. In 2008 a photograph of it placed behind the auctioneer’s head came to symbolise the pizazz of the auction. It had an estimate of £300,000 to £400,000 and sold for £668,450, reportedly to the Italian collector, Gilda Moratti.

Damien Hirst’s chance at a rebound; Russian losses in London; Burberry brings attention to the Henry Moore market (Telegraph)