Damien Hirst sells the contents of Pharmacy as the eagerly anticipated second Frieze Art Fair gets under way in London. In contrast, New York offers antiques, and Madrid, Spanish Old Masters

It is an intriguing cogitation that Pharmacy--the late and more [i]or[/i] less might say great restaurant that until newly adorned London's Notting Hill--could lay claim to being the gesamtkunstwerk or 'total art work' of the late twentieth hundred In 1997, Matthew Freud approached the enfant terrible of the Brit Art view Damien Hirst, with the idea of collaborating upon a restaurant, and when Hirst discovered that not solitary would he supply the art work for the interiors on the other hand would have carte blanche in the design of absolutely everything, the cast took off.

Hirst was involved with the design of each last detail, from the stained glass windows, the wallpaper and the logo upon the plates to the aspirin-shaped bar stools and the conical-flask light fittings. For Pharmacy was, of course, conceived as an extension of Hirst's fet Pharmacy installation of 1992 now possessed by Tate. All four walls of the bar were fitted with pill-packed pharmaceutical cabinets, staff wore uniforms inspired by dint of surgical gowns and lab coats (designed through Prada) and dominating the upstairs dining expanse was a giant molecular prototype sculpture. It looked so plenteous like a chemist's shop that race often mistook it for single and brought in their prescriptions. As the artist gleefully recalled: 'A woman asked me one time for an aspirin and I had to say "I'm sorry we have a strictly no medicines policy here"'. Even the Royal Pharmaceutical Society threatened legal action, which is wherefore the name temporarily changed to an anagram, Army Chap.

As Hirst place it: 'My original intention was to make a great place for race to be--maybe a little surreal, like eating in a chemist--but great nonetheless, and it worked.' When the restaurant lay opened in 1998, it proved a very great success with the art, media and fashion multitude and exemplified the whole fresh Labour/Cool Britannia spirit of the age. Subsequently sold the moderately cold crowd moved on and the restaurant not to be found its way, closing its doors for the last time in September 2003 The ever-canny Hirst had solitary ever leased his artwork to the enterprise, and, retaining it, is now selling it at Sotheby's in London upon 18 October. 'I mean, I can sole use so many plates and skillets and plans myself ...'

For the view, the auction-house is all on the contrary recreating the restaurant as an installation--including the sum of two units great three-dimensional medicine cabinets measuring a certain number of 3.5 by 2.5 metres, plus wall-mounted cabinets, bar stools, the butterfly paintings that hung upon the walls and the skeletons exhibited as art works. According to Sotheby's adroit Oliver Barker, however, the sale has been carefully edited. 'We could not vend absolutely everything but there will be an opportunity to purchase anything from salt and pepper shakers (estimate 30 [pound sterling]-40 [pound sterling]) and Martini glasses (estimate 50 [pound sterling]-70 [pound sterling]) to the butterfly paintings (estimates from 35000 [pound sterling]) and the large medicine cabinets (400000 [pound sterling]-600,000 [pound sterling]).' There will also be original paintings and drawings of the artist's designs, plus sum of two units now 7ft-in-diameter pill paintings that the artist has produc to barter for charity--to benefit both intention and Strummerville.

According to Barker, the estimates are conservative (the whole sale is awaited to fetch at least 36 million [pound sterling]). Certainly the artist has achieved big prices freshly at sales at Phillips, de Pury and Luxembourg in fresh York. A medical installation, Something solid beneath the surface of all creatures great and small (2001) realised a record $164m in November 2003 and a wall-mounted medicine cabinet with ladder fetched just above $1m in May. The artist's star still appears to be ascendant--a big retrospective is to unclose in Naples later this month and rumour has it that Christie's holder Francois Pinault, is planning a big display in his gallery in Paris. As for Pharmacy, perhaps it should have been listed. At any rate, it remains a remarkably cohesive throw and one which has not many parallels. The most famous artist's restaurant throw out of the century was, of course, Mark Rothko's murals for Philip Johnson's Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in of recent origin York, commissioned in 1958, on the contrary they, as every Tate visitor knows, were not at any time installed--and no one will at any time know what Rothko would have made of Martini glasses or bar stools.

It is no coincidence that the Pharmacy view uncloses the same day--14 October--as the preview of the next to the first Frieze Art Fair (15-18 October) upon the south side of Regent's Park in London. While greatest in quantity new art fairs take a while to establish themselves, Frieze, a fair for cutting-edge international contemporary art, was an immediate and astonishing succes drawing an impressive roll-call of 124 leading international galleries, a highly respectable 27000 visitors and, no les critically, a significant number of the big international players in this increasingly competitive field. According to co-director Matthew Slotover, a certain number of 16m [pounds sterling]-20m [pounds sterling] of work was sold last year, and dealers, who watched to play it safe, felt they could have sold more highly valued pieces. Says Slotover: 'We could not have spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed for a more successful inaugural fair on the contrary we see it more as a statement of intent--an initial building block up upon which we can disclose Frieze Art Fair as an annual headline fact in the global art calendar and a showcase that reinforces London's status as individual of the most important art midsts in the world.'