BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y.—How does a major auction house face the prospect of the most economically uncertain season in recent memory? By announcing “business as usual,” obviously, even while conducting business in ways that are — to say the least — palpably unusual.

As everyone knows, Sotheby’s will be staging “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” a $120 million–plus, three-session primary market sale of Damien Hirst’s work — 223 brand new pieces, direct from the studio — in their London salesroom on September 15 and 16. In preparation, the whole New Bond Street building has been turned over to previewing the exhibition, starting next Friday, September 5; Sotheby’s has produced a more than lavish slipcased catalogue for the event (three volumes and two single-work supplements); and on Wednesday, they staged a one-day public highlights show in New Delhi, India. Then last night, for two tantalizing hours, 10 of the 223 lots, never before seen in public (including the dotted Aurothiglucose, the spun Beautiful Muruga Paranoia Intense Painting [With Extra Inner Beauty], and the butterfly-strewn Sometimes Life Can Be Really, Really Dark, plus an outsize mock-up of The Kingdom, a new shark tank piece) went on display for their only exhibition outside of London — in the Hamptons.

The preview took place at the Bridge, a private golf club with a low, sleek modernist clubhouse — all glass and steel — overlooking the sea, midway between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. There Sotheby’s treated the few hundred carefully selected guests to a cocktail reception and, if they chose to lug it home, a copy of the catalogue hot off the press. In addition to the expected Hamptons residents, Sotheby’s staffers were there en masse: Lisa Dennison, Jamie Niven, and Cheyenne Westphal, chairpeople of North America, South America, and Europe, respectively, as well as worldwide head of contemporary art Tobias Meyer and a busload of beautiful girls in summer frocks.

According to Westphal, the specialist in charge of the auction, both the sale and the party came about in the most casual fashion — the house didn’t even present a formal proposal to Hirst, who worked with Sotheby’s on his “Pharmacy” auction in 2004. Instead, the sale was decided in an easy chat (“Let’s do it,” Hirst said), and the party idea was hatched during a Sotheby’s conference call, with Dennison saying “there’s no point in doing it in New York. Let’s do it out here [in the Hamptons], where everybody holidays.”

Dennison suggested the Bridge; Hirst pal Richard Prince, who has work in the club’s collection, supported the idea; Dennison sent photos of the remarkable Roger Ferris building to London; and Westphal and Hirst planned the installation.

So there was no Hirstian manipulation behind all this? No irony in showing so few works for such a short time to so few people? No publicity stunt behind selecting the Hamptons and New Delhi for the sale’s two previews?

It would appear not. “It was our idea, but then Damien went for it,” Westphal told me, while Dennison said, “We wanted to bring it to an area where there is a strong density of Damien’s collectors and get them excited about it.”

The idea was to seek out potential buyers and give them something to think about and leaf through on the last lazy weekend of summer, Westphal explained, before things in New York return to busyness as usual.