million) for 218 items with three remaining unsold (two others were sold privately after the evening auction). The auction was successful beyond any expectations, setting a record for a single-artist auction, and exceeding by ten times higher the existing record for the sale of a single artist's work at Sotheby's. It occurred as the financial markets plunged and on the day when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Hirst's associates The Sunday Times said that three of Hirst's business colleagues, with an interest in ensuring his work maintained a high value, had "propped up" the sale prices, making between them purchases or bids which totalled over half of the £70.5 million spent on the "crucial" initial sale day: Jay Jopling won the first lot at twice the estimate with a bid just short of £1 million, and was a high bidder on The Kingdom; his White Cube gallery was the underbidder on lots which reached an estimated £20 million. Hirst's dealer in the United States, Larry Gagosian won one lot at £880,000, and made the second highest bid for another lot which sold for £10.3 million. Harry Blain, a co-founder of the Haunch of Venison gallery which trades in Hirst's art, underbid on two items and won two, including a cabinet at £1.3 million. The White Cube and Gagosian declined to discuss their motivations for bidding; Blain said that bids were entered on behalf of clients wishing to acquire the work. Other dealers observed that Gagosian, White Cube and Blain all have clients wishing to acquire Hirst's work. The chief executive of the Fine Art Fund, Philip Hoffman, said there was a degree of "protectionism" and that Jopling had bid for a "lousy piece", which was likely to fare badly in the sale. The exhibition-auction as media and marketing performance art At the time and afterwards the exhibition-auction has been described as a kind of marketing and media/communications performance art. In a Guardian newspaper article, Germaine Greer said, "Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing. To develop so strong a brand on so conspicuously threadbare a rationale is hugely creative - revolutionary even." The performative nature was later addressed in the exhibition at Tate Modern, "Pop Life: Art in a material world", to which critic Ben Lewis found it very offensive: "... the gallery texts have the temerity to claim that the greed-fuelled auction