New York art dealer Christoph Van de Weghe had eight works by Damien Hirst in his booth at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair earlier this month. He sold only two.

The small “spin” and “butterfly” paintings went for $160,000 each, compared with the asking price of $185,000. The unsold works included an $850,000 cabinet filled with cigarette butts and a blue canvas with 15 butterflies.

“The timing is not so good,” Van de Weghe said. “Today I’m telling my clients that it’s better to buy established artists who are dead and won’t produce.”

Three months after Hirst sold more than 200 of his works for 111.5 million pounds ($199 million) at Sotheby’s in London, his market has contracted dramatically.

At the bellwether November sales in New York, 11 out of 17 Hirst lots failed to find buyers at three auction houses. On the resale, or secondary market, dealers said demand has dried up, especially for works above $1 million.

That’s a far cry from the “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” two-day auction in London, where 218 of the 223 lots found buyers and 49 pieces fetched more than $1 million, according to Sotheby’s.

“The event in September was of such unprecedented magnitude that there’s nervousness about how it will affect the market going forward,” said Anders Petterson, founder and managing director of London-based art-market research company ArtTactic.

Stretched Too Far

Petterson said ArtTactic surveyed about 150 collectors, dealers and art advisers about Hirst and found “the feeling is that the Hirst market has been stretched a bit too far, almost as if it snapped and backfired.”

Gagosian Gallery and White Cube, which represent Hirst in the U.S. and the U.K., respectively, didn’t return calls and e- mails from Bloomberg News seeking comment.

An oversupply of Hirst’s works resulting from the “Beautiful” sale will damp his prices at least through next May, ArtTactic’s Petterson said.

“We will see less of him at auction or we’ll see as many works but with lower estimates,” he said.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s said estimates on future consignments of Hirst’s works will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

“We are by no means looking at bodies of paintings and readjusting the estimates,” said Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s senior international specialist.

Pricing Discount

An important painting or sculpture by Hirst would have a minor price reduction while a “pedestrian” spot or spin painting could be discounted by 20 percent, said Robert Manley, head of Christie’s contemporary-art department.

“We’ll work very diligently with customers on setting the right estimates,” he said. “If we can’t, we’ll walk away from them.”

Last month, Hirst fired up to 17 people who make the pills for his drug cabinets and three people who make his butterfly paintings, the Guardian newspaper reported.

“Fixed, short-term contracts are often not renewed,” Jude Tyrrell, director of Hirst’s art-producing company Science Ltd, wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

In August, Tyrrell told Bloomberg News that Hirst will stop making his spin and butterfly paintings as well as medicine cabinets after 2008. Hirst isn’t the only artist whose prices are affected by the art market’s downturn. Scores of works by Andy Warhol, Jean- Michel Basquiat and Takashi Murakami went unsold at the recent sales after a five-year run-up in value.

‘Skull’ Flops

At the New York auctions, buyers passed on 67 percent of Hirst’s works at the evening sales and 64 percent during the day sessions, according to ArtTactic. The biggest flop was a painting of four skulls, set against a “spin” background. It was expected to fetch at least $3 million at Phillips de Pury & Co. but failed to find a buyer.

Last year, Hirst joined an investment group that bought his platinum, diamond-crusted skull for $100 million.

The artworks that sold went for 25 percent less on average than their low estimates, according to ArtTactic. Out of six lots expected to fetch at least $1 million, only one squeezed past that figure.

On the secondary market, Hirst remains a tough sell, dealers and art advisers said.

“There’s little or no activity at $1 million or higher,” said Chelsea dealer Perry Rubenstein, who has sold various Hirst artworks in the past.

“The price level for his market is completely unclear right now,” said David Zwirner, the owner of one of the two largest galleries in Chelsea.

Petterson of ArtTactic said his survey’s respondents feel certain about the impact of prices reached at Hirst’s “Beautiful” sale.

“In hindsight, it was the peak of the market,” he said.