Sotheby’s £17m sale heralds the return of ‘real collectors’

Lovers of both contemporary art and Damien Hirst went to Sotheby's last night for the first sale since a nuclear explosion hit this market in New York last November and wiped 20 per cent off prices.

Fear was high and nerves were frayed. To general amazement, however, prices fell no further and bidding and confidence rose throughout the auction.

Sotheby's sold 28 artworks out of 30 by Jeff Koons, Lucio Fontana, Anish Kapoor, Bridget Riley, Andy Warhol and, yes, a butterfly painting by Damien Hirst and said it was "thrilled" with the result — £17,879,250 total with only seven per cent unsold by value.

Offering his view on why contemporary art was resisting any new collapse, a dealer from New York quipped: "Which would you rather have, shares in General Motors or an Andy Warhol?"

Philip Hoffman, director of London's £200 million investment-driven Fine Art Fund, replied: "People want art because they don't trust money With inflation heading for us on the grand scale, investors are preferring assets to cash."

Star of last night's sale was Concetto Spaziale of 1961 by Lucio Fontana inspired by the shape of the city of Venice; it sold very slowly for £4,409,250, shy of its estimate between £6 million and £8 million. Behind it was Jeff Koons's Stacked, a painted wood mountain of two dogs, a goat, a tit and a fat pig from his Banality series of the Eighties. Its £2,841,250 price was on estimate but the estimate was a wintry one; it announced a fall of around £1 million in value from last summer for the world's most expensive living artist after Lucian Freud.

Andy Warhol was one of three artists to sell strongly. His hair-raising Three Self Portraits of 1987, the year before his death, fetched £892,450.

British artists also scored. A dizzying swirling sea acrylic by Bridget Riley, Gala, 1974, realised an on-target £735,650. The price was evidence of the esteem 77-year old Miss Riley is held in but bad news for Sotheby's, which last October allegedly guaranteed the seller £1 million for it. Even Hirst survived the night. His £111 million two-day bonanza at Sotheby's last September now seems like news from another planet.

Bids for Dark Days — a giant 7ft heart-shaped canvas glued with butterflies and diamonds — began to falter way below estimate at £160,000 but then four hands began to wave and it went for a respectable £350,000, although it was unclear whether the fillip was inspired by its being a Hirst or the fact that proceeds would go to a charity for Ukrainian babies.

Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer said he thought that contemporary art's freefall had now been halted and added: "People still have money for art The speculators have vanished and the market belongs again to serious collectors."