Koons, Hirst Works Sell in 4.6 Million-Euro Paris Charity Sale

Koons, Hirst Works Sell in 4.6 Million-Euro Paris Charity Sale
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By Scott Reyburn
March 18 (Bloomberg) -- Works donated by Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Jeff Koons and other artists fetched 4.6 million euros ($6 million) in Paris last night at a sold-out charity auction that didn’t set a minimum price on the items.
The 28 works had been expected to fetch 3 million euros, according to host Christie’s International. The priciest item was Serra’s 1987 “Backstop (to Thurman Munson),” a 12-foot, 5- inch-high diamond-shaped sculpture made from two rectangular steel plates, which fetched a hammer price of 700,000 euros, against a presale low estimate of 1 million euros.
“The market is not so high,” said Florence de Botton, Christie’s Paris-based head of contemporary art, in a telephone interview. “This was a beautiful gift from everyone.”
Some works sold at this auction were bargains compared with prices charged by dealers last year. Jake and Dinos Chapman’s painted metal sculpture, “I Wanted To Be Popular II,” fetched a below-estimate price of 40,000 euros; last September, London- based gallery White Cube was selling the U.K. brothers’ works at France’s biggest contemporary-art fair in Paris for between 140,000 pounds and 185,000 pounds.
Christie’s had also waived buyer’s premium for the auction, a tribute to the work of the French oncologist, Professor David Khayat. Proceeds go to cancer research and treatment organization AVEC, or Association pour la Vie et l’Espoir contre le Cancer, said Christie’s. Christie’s said the amount raised is the most for a charity contemporary-art sale in France.
European, U.S. Buyers
Of the buyers, 76 percent were based in Europe and the rest were from the U.S.
Hirst’s 2008 butterfly painting of a skull, “Golgotha,” sold for 500,000 euros, as did Koons’s 1999 mirror painting, “Goat (Blue).” The Hirst, with a low estimate of 600,000 euros, was bought by a European bidder in the room; the Koons, with a presale low estimate of 400,000 euros, went to a European represented by de Botton on the telephone.
The cheapest lot was a 2008 digital painting by Japanese artist Chiho Aoshima, which sold for a hammer price of 6,000 euros against a low estimate of 10,000 euros.
(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.