Not everyone would agree that a divided dead animal is a work of art, unless there’s Damien Hirst's signature on it. His sawn up lamb submerged in formaldehyde fetched $3 million at a Christie’s auction.

The controversial 1994 piece led Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Auction, held on Tuesday in London. The divided lamb was expected to sell for up to $3.8 million, however failed to hit the upper end of the estimate.  

The sheep is divided in half along the length of its body and submerged in a glass tank of formaldehyde was last sold by Christie's seven years ago fetching $3.3 million.

Through his ‘Away From the Flock (Divided)’ the artist meditated on the Christian metaphor of the shepherd and his flock also emphasizing the vulnerability of the lamb.

“The isolated lamb in Hirst's 'Away from the Flock' has become fully as totemic a symbol of his artistic identity as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living from three years before – [the iconic tiger shark in a tank],” Christie’s note on the artwork says.

The piece is part of a sequence of the artist’s iconic Natural History works.

Leading the evening sale were paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Peter Doig and Gerhard Richter. Basquiat’s 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)' became the top lot in the auction, selling for $14.5 million.

The auction fetched a total of $127 million.

Image from christies.com

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