Damien Hirst’s record “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale and collapse of Lehman Brothers Inc. in September marked the turning of the art market in 2008.

The financial-market rout curtailed spending by U.S. and European art collectors. Falling commodity and equity prices suppressed demand from buyers from the emerging economies of Russia and the Middle East.

In 2007, Sotheby’s and Christie’s International’s regular mixed-owner sales of contemporary art in New York and London totaled a record $2.4 billion with fees. This year, because of a slowing of demand in the final quarter, the equivalent auctions totaled less than $2 billion, a decline of 17 percent, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg News.

“It’s a turning point,” said Nicolai Frahm, a London- based art adviser, at a Phillips de Pury & Company sale in October as prices declined. “The estimates were fairly high and the financial markets are so tough at the moment.”

Sotheby’s and Christie’s lost at least $50 million and $40 million each from failed guarantees in their final-quarter sales. Auction houses are cutting staff, abandoning guarantees of a price to sellers, and reducing estimates on individual works.

Key sale items and dates since Hirst’s auction at Sotheby’s London raised a record 111.5 million pounds ($162 million at current rates) in a single-artist sale of new work:

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asian art was one of the few categories that continued to shine in the economic gloom.

Oct. 6: A painting of bloodied boxers by the Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi fetched a record HK$7.8 million ($1 million) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.

Sotheby’s sold 92 of the 96 pieces of contemporary Southeast Asian art offered that morning, totaling HK$40.6 million. Works by Indonesian artists such as Masriadi, Agus Suwage and Rudi Mantofani sold for several times Sotheby’s top estimates.

“Investors, not collectors, are driving up Southeast Asian art prices,” Shirley Ben Bashat, who runs Opera Gallery in Hong Kong, said at the time. “Why buy a Zhang Xiaogang when you know prices won’t flip 10 times? Why not buy works by young painters that might?”

This year, 12 works by Masriadi sold at auctions in Asia for prices in excess of HK$2 million, said the saleroom result database Artnet.

By contrast, Chinese contemporary works struggled to sell at Sotheby’s five-day auction in October. The HK$1.1 billion total was about half the presale estimate.

London Sales

In October, demand slowed significantly at the series of contemporary-art sales in London timed to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair. The sales also coincided with governments bailing out banks and equity prices slumping. The week’s total was 59 million pounds, about half of the 106.2 million-pounds minimum estimate.

Christie’s failed to sell 45 percent of the lots at its Oct. 19 auction.

Lucio Fontana’s black 1963-64 “Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio” had been expected to fetch 12 million pounds, an increase on the record 10.3 million pounds with fees paid in February for a gold example at Sotheby’s, London. The seller had been guaranteed a minimum price.

The black canvas sold to a lone commission bid of 9 million pounds. Christie’s said before the sale that someone with a financial interest in the work would be bidding.

In February 2005, a similar Fontana “Fine di Dio” canvas, this time in pink, sold at Sotheby’s, London, for 1 million pounds with fees.

New York Sales

November: In New York, the contemporary-art market contracted under pressure from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s tallied a combined $238.7 million, 44 percent below their expected total of $429 million, at their bellwether New York auctions.

Works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Brice Marden failed to sell. Two months after his “Beautiful” sale, Hirst was one of the casualties. Buyers passed on 11 out of 17 of his works.

The biggest flop was “Beautiful Artemis Thor Neptune Odin Delusional Sapphic Inspirational Hypnosis Painting,” which was part of a series that appeared in September 2007 during a show of Hirst’s collection for Levi Strauss & Co. at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. On Nov. 13, it found no takers at $1.8 million at Phillips de Pury, which had estimated it would fetch at least $3 million.

Marden’s swirling abstraction “Attendant 5,” estimated to bring between $10 million and $15 million, failed to attract a single bid from a crowded salesroom at Christie’s postwar and contemporary evening sale in New York. The work, executed between 1996 and 1999, was one of 39 lots for which the auction house had guaranteed to pay the sellers regardless of the sale’s outcome. Twelve of such lots failed to sell, with a combined low estimate of $48 million.

This is the second of two articles about key auction prices of the year. The first was published yesterday.