A work by leading British contemporary artist Damien Hirst fetched HK$17.22 million ($2.22 million), breaking the record for a work by the artist auctioned in Asia.

The price was seen by some experts as an indicator of Asia's growing appetite for top-flight Western contemporary art, but with the financial crisis still weighing heavily on the market, buyers stayed on the sidelines for lesser works of Asian and Western contemporary art at a prominent Hong Kong sale.

The work, "The Importance of Elsewhere -- The Kingdom of Heaven", a large panel painting of butterflies fashioned after a stained glass church window, made $2.2 million after just a handful of bids at a sale by Korea's Seoul Auction, which has strived to carve out a bigger market for Western art in Asia.

The price, while a record in Asia, still pales with the sums paid for Hirst in the West, including a diamond-encrusted skull that made $100 million in 2007.

Hirst's previous Asia record was for "Tranquility", which sold for $1.7 million in May. But while top lots like Hirst's did well, 37 percent of works at the auction went unsold.

"Good quality good pieces sell well, otherwise it's very tough," said Misung Shim, the managing director of Seoul Auction.

"Since Damien Hirst is a big artist, I think clients were confident about his market recovering," Shim added.

While Asians have been slowly becoming more active in acquiring top-flight Western art, particularly the Koreans and Japanese, hot money from China has yet to shift substantially away from Asian and Chinese artwork, dealers say.

"The interest must slowly percolate through to the Chinese diaspora in Asia eventually," said Anthony Lin, a prominent Asian dealer and art consultant. "It'll be interesting to see."