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  3. The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beauti

The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beauti

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问题     The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby’s in London on September 15th 2008. All but two pieces sold, fetching more than ￡70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last victory. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy.
    The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising vertiginously since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other industries.
    In the weeks and months that followed Mr. Hirst’s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable. In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms.
    Sales of contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector — for Chinese contemporary art—they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world’s two biggest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to clients who had placed works for sale with them.
    The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists at the end of 1989. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more volatile. But Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, says: "I’m pretty confident we’re at the bottom."
    What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce — still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.
In the first paragraph, Damien Hirst’s sale was referred to as "a last victory" because______.
选项 A、the art market had witnessed a succession of victories
B、the auctioneer finally got the two pieces at the highest bids
C、Beautiful Inside My Head Forever won over all masterpieces
D、it was successfully made just before the world financial crisis
答案D
解析 本题信息点是Damien Hirst’s sale was referred to as“a last victory”，该信息点出现在文章第三句话。但是该句话并没有给出原因，于是根据原因题的解题思路，我们推断原因在下句：As the auctioneer called out bids…，Lehman Brothers，filed for bankruptcy．，雷曼兄弟的破产标志着世界金融危机的开始，由此确定本题答案为D。
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