Never mind Black Monday, the credit crunch and the banking crash - the art market is booming.

As if immune to the turmoil all around them - or maybe as a means of escaping it - art-loving millionaires and their agents blew a record 70.5 million pounds (125 million dollars) on works by Damien Hirst in one evening at an auction at Sotheby's in London Monday.

The total of the two-day sale, experts predict, will be well in excess of 100 million pounds.

The prize lot at Sotheby's could not have been more appropriately named: The Golden Calf, a massive bull on a Carrara marble plinth in a tank of formaldehyde, was sold for 10.3 million pounds.

It was followed closely by the 9.6 million pounds paid for The Kingdom, a tiger shark preserved in the same traditional Hirst style.

Sotheby's said the auction, entitled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, had set a record for a sale dedicated to one artist.

The sum of 70 million pounds realised on the first night exceeded Sotheby's estimated total of 65 million pounds for the whole of the auction.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby's auctioneer, said he would remember the sale as the most extraordinary of his career.

"The 100-per-cent sale on the day a major US bank went into liquidation is a testament to Hirst's standing as an artist," he said. 

Once the "formaldehyde frenzy" was unleashed, it was clear that Hirst, Britain's foremost contemporary artist, would succeed in his declared goal to free artists from the bondage of galleries and agents by selling their works directly at auction.

"I think the market is bigger than anyone knows, I love art and this proves I'm not alone and the future looks great for everyone," Hirst, 43, said after the show.

In a groundbreaking move, he has presented a total of 223 new works directly to the buyer at auction, cutting out agents' commissions and ensuring an almost 
100-per-cent profit for the artist.

The bidders for the 54 works on offer on the first night paid an average price of 1.3 million pounds per piece.

Many of them were believed to be Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil millionaires and the newly-rich from the emerging economies of India, China, Asia - calmly directing their agents in the sales room via mobile phone.

For them, what counts is the kudos attached to owning a famous Hirst, and a work that has never hung, or stood, in anyone else's home before.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, the title of another of Hirst's work, may have gone through their mind as markets tumbled around them. 

"Banks fall over, art triumphs," said Simon Rosenthal, the long- term head of exhibitions at London's Royal Academy.

"Like asteroids on an inexorable collision course, the spectacular sale converged on the most spectacular bank collapse of the century," commented the Guardian.

Hirst, meanwhile, in an enigmatic message attached to the sketch of the Golden Calf, wrote: "Don't go worshipping false idols! Don't go chasing waterfalls!"