It may be the world’s most famous—or infamous—toilet: a 220-pound, 18-carat solid gold throne created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan that attracted around 100,000 visitors when it was first displayed in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016.
Three years later, the artwork — titled “America” — was stolen in a daring five-minute heist from Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill in Oxfordshire. The sledgehammer-wielding thieves were convicted earlier this year, but the fully functional toilet was never recovered. It is believed to have been cut up or melted down for millions worth of gold.
Golden return
That wasn’t the end of the story for the satirical statue that was once offered to President Donald Trump after his administration requested a Van Gogh painting from the Guggenheim — an offer that was reportedly ignored.
Cattelan previously said he has created several editions of “America,” and now one of them is set to make a splashy return to the art market next month.
‘America,’ a gold toilet artwork seen at Blenheim Palace just two days before it was stolen.
Sotheby’s in New York will auction the piece, which has been privately owned since 2017, on November 18. Prior to the sale, the golden toilet will be temporarily displayed in the bathroom of Sotheby’s new headquarters for ten days. However, visitors will not be able to use it.
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Worth its weight in gold
Unlike most auctions, the initial bid for “America” will be tied to the current record high gold price. Sotheby’s expects a starting value of around $10 million, although the final price will depend on what collectors think the price will be.
“The default bid in line with the price of gold was really a way to lean on the very essence of the conceptual basis of the artwork, which is pretty much to draw attention to the difference between the artistic value of the work and the intrinsic material value of the work,” Galperin told CNN.
He described “America” as “the perfect foil” to Cattelano’s other notorious piece, “Comedian” — a banana duct tape stuck to a wall — which sold for $6.24 million at Sotheby’s last year.
“If ‘The Comedian’ was all about the intangibility of value and how we assign value to works of art, ‘America’ challenges that by being in many ways, intrinsically valuable, in a way that so many works of art are not.”
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A satire on value and culture
According to Sotheby’s, “America” serves as a commentary on art and society as well as a reflection of American excess. Guggenheim once described it as an opportunity for “unprecedented intimacy with a work of art.”
Although “America” was originally conceived as an edition of three, the auction house believes it may be the only physical version ever made.
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“Cattelan has been critical of the system throughout his career,” Galperin told CNN. “Whether it’s the audience experience of seeing art in a museum, the way artworks move through the system, the way they’re valued, the way they change hands. All of these concepts are things that artworks rarely get to experience. His ability to do that and do it in such a legible and compelling way is part of his success here.”
