Damien Hirst's pickled animals and his other works fetched nearly $200 million at the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever auction at Sotheby's in London. The two-day sale smashed the record for a sale dedicated to one artist, beating by far the 20 million dollars for 88 works by Pablo Picasso sold in 1993 at Sotheby's.

On Monday, his work entitled The Golden Calf, basically a bull in a tank of formaldehyde with gold horns, fetched almost $20 million. All but five of the 223 lots sold, and Damien Hirst will certainly save millions by cutting out a hefty dealers' commission that he would have paid should the artist have chosen to sell through galleries.

Damien Hirst, 43, broke through in art in the early 1990s as an awkward, controversial artist whose early works included a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head, titled A Thousand Years. The piece impressed collector Charles Saatchi who funded the artist for a few years after the two broke off.

Hirst's "art" titled Two Fucking and Two Watching was banned by New York public health officials because they feared it would cause nausea and vomiting among visitors. The piece consisted of a rotting cow and bull.

Hirst was repeatedly accused of plagiarizing other people's work. He is also harshly criticized for being overrated and for cleverly creating hype (and thus raising the price) around his works, much like a commercial brand.

In 2002, Damien Hirst made some shocking comments about the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, claiming that they were visually stunning and terrorists achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, which is why they allegedly needed congratulating. He later issued a statement apologizing for the remarks.

He also made headlines for making a sculpture last year called For the Love of God, which is a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds which cost around $25 million to make and was allegedly sold for around $100 million to an anonymous consortium, but that claim is disputed by some. Richard Dorment, art critic of the Daily Telegraph, said that the piece looks like the kind of thing Asprey or Harrods might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art.