That’s mammoth! £9m for Damien Hirst’s golden idol
Artist celebrates massive charity sale with movie mogul’s protegee
HE FAMOUSLY claimed that making art is like robbing a bank. If so, Damien Hirst could now be considered the Robin Hood of the art world after donating one of his most audacious – and expensive – pieces to charity.
His latest ambitious creation, a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton, gilded in 24-carat gold leaf and encased in a giant gold-framed tank, has been sold for an eye-watering £8.9million.
Entitled Gone But Not Forgotten, it was auctioned at a star-studded event and bought by Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born owner of Warner Music and Britain’s fourth richest person.
The businessman conceded that he ‘doesn’t yet’ know what to do with the 10ft-tall work. But it could look good in his £200million, 13-bedroom home in Kensington, West London. Mr Blavatnik, whose fortune has been put at £10billion, certainly becomes one of one of the few people in the world who privately owns such an important piece of natural history.
Mr Hirst – the world’s richest artist with a wealth of more than £200million – bought the skeleton last year, but is sworn to secrecy about which collector he acquired it from.
It took the artist and several members of his team weeks to painstakingly take apart every bone from the skeleton.
They were then delicately painted with thousands of pieces of paperthin gold with feather-light brushes at his studio, Science Ltd, in Stroud, Gloucestershire, before the skeleton was reassembled.
The finished work went under the hammer on Friday at a Pirelli-sponsored fundraiser for the Amfar charity in Cannes, attended by Leonardo Di-Caprio, Kylie Minogue, Dita Von Teese, Adrien Brody, Paris Hilton and Catherine Deneuve.
Other lots included a trip to space with Di-Caprio on board the Virgin Galactic, which fetched £567,000, and an Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe which sold for £283,000.
The audience were laughing for most of the night but nothing was funny when it came to money. Sharon Stone, who acted as auctioneer for some of the lots, had to be corrected dozens of times for calling out ‘dollars’ instead of euros.
Organisers had to grab the microphone when Simon de Pury – the world’s best-known art auctioneer – made the same mistake during the bidding war for the mammoth.
For the sale of Hirst’s skeleton, the room fell silent.
Hirst himself was said to be too nervous to take his place at the top table, and Mr De Pury told the audi- ence: ‘Mr Hirst is very elusive, I can’t see him. But he is believed to be somewhere in this room.’
A guest told The Mail on Sunday: ‘He wasn’t trying to pull a Banksy with his absence, he was just too modest. He was worried the piece would sell for less than it was worth so he hid. Luckily for Damien his fears were unsubstantiated.’
One guest who beamed with pride when the gavel came down was model Katie Keight, a 24-year-old budding actress who has been quietly seeing Mr Hirst for months after meeting him through movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is convinced she will be his next big star.
She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have known Damien for a few months. We are a bit cuddly and a bit snuggly and snoggy but that’s it.’
The golden mammoth was the only animal skeleton in Hirst’s natural history collection, which he began in 1991 and includes various animals immersed in formaldehyde. His famous The Golden Calf sold for £10.3million in 2008.