A unique 18-karat gold sculpture in the shape of a toilet, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, will be auctioned in New York at Sotheby’s. The artwork, titled America and weighing around 100 kilograms, will be displayed in the auction house’s restroom before being sold on November 18, reports Baltimore Chronicle with reference to Art News and The New York Times.
Unlike its first public presentation in 2016, visitors this time will not be allowed to use the golden toilet. Sotheby’s representatives announced that the starting price will be approximately $10 million — a figure directly linked to the gold’s material value. The auction house emphasized that Cattelan’s sharp commentary on the clash between artistic creation and commercial worth “has never felt more relevant.”
In October 2024, Sotheby’s sold another of Cattelan’s provocative works — a banana taped to a wall — for $6.2 million. Both pieces have become symbols of his ironic critique of modern consumer culture.
The America installation was first unveiled in 2016 at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where visitors were allowed to actually use the toilet. Over 100,000 people took part in what the museum described as “an unprecedented intimacy with art.”
Three years later, the sculpture was exhibited at Blenheim Palace in the United Kingdom, once home to Winston Churchill. During the exhibition, the golden toilet was stolen after thieves disconnected it from the plumbing, causing a small flood in the room. According to police reports, the stolen artwork was later smashed to pieces and discarded. Three British men were convicted for their involvement in the theft.
The version heading to Sotheby’s this year was created in 2016 and purchased by its current owner in 2017 through the Marian Goodman Gallery. Art experts have drawn parallels between Cattelan’s America and Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Fountain (1917), considered one of the most influential works in conceptual art. David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, remarked that understanding America is “almost impossible without referencing Duchamp’s Fountain.”
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