Damien Hirst is an artist unlike any other: a showman, a pioneer and a provocateur, of course, but most of all a ruthless titan of industry with his own work as the highly successful product.

This rarity value is what puts him on the cover of Time magazine this week, what drove him to be the first artist to auction new work directly and why it would be unwise to draw too many general conclusions from the sales on September 15 and 16.

Nevertheless, the eyes of the art world will be firmly trained on Sotheby's headquarters in New Bond Street for the Hirst auctions. After Sotheby's sold off the contents of Pharmacy, Hirst's Notting Hill restaurant, in 2004, several artists told the auction house that they would love to be able to try something similar.

The trouble is that very few living artists can. Hirst is betting his reputation on this sale because he has a deep pool of regular collectors, the sort of global fame that guarantees new buyers and a small army of helpers working for him to keep his productivity sky high.

Andy Warhol and Picasso matched or exceeded Hirst in those departments but are no longer with us. Tracey Emin works fast but lacks Hirst's international standing. Jeff Koons has the fame and the following but is less prolific, while Lucian Freud, the world's most expensive living artist at auction, would probably take several centuries to craft 223 new works.

Underpinning Hirst's advantages is an aggressive global marketing campaign. In the Hamptons Sotheby's showed a sample of the work at a cocktail party for 450 people in a private golf club packed with Wall Street's finest.

The most significant overtures have been made to the emerging buyers in the East who are reshaping the top end of the global art market. Sotheby's Moscow office has been sent 17 per cent more catalogues than originally expected in response to specific requests from prospective buyers, and last week Hirst's work travelled to Delhi for the first time. In a country where the Hindu majority population regard cows as sacred, the inclusion of a cow split in half and preserved in the familiar Hirst formaldeyde caused an equally familiar, profile-raising controversy.

Hirst believes that his auction is “just a fast-forward” to a future that the art world is already heading for. Unless the auctions smash through Sotheby's top estimate of £90 millon it may be some time before any other important artist joins him there.

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