Is Hirst looking to cut out auction houses?

Has Damien Hirst's hugely successful sale at Sotheby's gone to his head? As the second and final day of the auction brought in another £41m on top of Monday's £70.5m, fanciful gossip in the London art world suggests that after sidelining his dealers, Hirst may now cut the auctioneers out of the picture too - and set up his own auction house.

A source told The First Post last night that a Damien Hirst auction house would make a lot of sense. "His brand is very strong. He could do mixed-name auctions by big name artists and, of course, he would take up to 25 per cent commission." The wild speculation is helped along by the fact that Hirst owns two adjoining "massive" Georgian houses in Mayfair that could be used as auction rooms.

If this week's sale was a one-off for Sotheby's, it was at least a profitable one. "We are very, very happy," said a spokesman, while Sotheby's MD Patric Van Maris called it "undoubtedly the sale of the century - to date." Highlights of day two included The Dream - a foal in formaldehyde - which sold for £2.3m, and a butterfly piece called Reincarnated, which went for £1.6m, more than twice its pre-sale estimate.

The 43-year-old multi-millionaire artist said afterwards: "I'm totally exhausted and amazed that my art is selling while banks are falling. I guess it means that people would rather put their money into butterflies than banks - seems like a better world today to me."

Not everyone was impressed. "It's quite obvious that the art world has gone stark raving bonkers," said Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist art movement, which promotes figurative as opposed to conceptual art.