{"id":252354,"date":"2025-10-31T13:18:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252354\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:18:22","slug":"the-artist-maurizio-cattelans-infamous-gold-toilet-is-back-with-a-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252354\/","title":{"rendered":"The artist Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s infamous gold toilet is back \u2014 with a twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n It might be the most famous \u2014 or infamous \u2014 toilet in the world: the 220-pound, 18-karat solid gold throne by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, which drew some 100,000 visitors<\/a> when it first exhibited in the bathroom of New York\u2019s Guggenheim Museum in 2016.\n <\/p>\n

\n Three years later, thieves, armed with sledgehammers, stole it in an audacious five-minute heist from Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill\u2019s historic birthplace in the English countryside. Though the perpetrators were convicted earlier this year<\/a>, the fully functional, opulent toilet, titled \u201cAmerica,\u201d was never found, believed to be cut up or melted down for the value of the gold itself, worth millions.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that isn\u2019t the end of the saga for the satirical sculpture, which was once offered to President Donald J. Trump during his first term, in lieu of a Van Gogh painting requested by his administration (the counteroffer was reportedly ignored)<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Cattelan has previously stated he had made more than one edition of \u201cAmerica,\u201d and now a second edition is making an unexpected, flashy debut on the art market next month.\n <\/p>\n

\n Sotheby\u2019s in New York will sell the work, which has been in private (and anonymous) hands since 2017, on November 18. That also means the sculpture will be back on public view for a limited time, when the auction house installs it in the fourth-floor bathroom of its brand-new headquarters for 10 days leading up to the sale. This time, however, visitors will not be able to use it, per Sotheby\u2019s. Officially that\u2019s for security reasons, though one can guess why else.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe door will remain open,\u201d said David Galperin, Sotheby\u2019s head of contemporary art, laughing.\n <\/p>\n

\"\u201cAmerica\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Auctions typically have a set starting bid, informed by a number of market factors, as well as low and high sales numbers, estimated ahead of time. But the sale for this \u201cAmerica\u201d will be worth its weight in gold \u2014 quite literally \u2014 as the starting figure will be its inherent value, fluctuating with the gold market right up until bidding begins. That will be somewhere in the $10 million range, according to the current value (with the price of gold lately setting record highs<\/a>), plus whatever collectors deem its ascribed value to be.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe starting bid in accordance with the price of gold was really a way to lean into the very essence of the conceptual basis behind the artwork, which is largely to draw attention to the difference between a work\u2019s artistic value, and a work\u2019s inherent material value,\u201d Galperin explained.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"\u201cAmerica\u201d<\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a \u201cperfect foil\u201d to Cattelan\u2019s other equally infamous banana-on-a-wall, \u201cComedian,\u201d which sold for $6.24 million at Sotheby\u2019s last fall<\/a>, Galperin added. The duct-taped banana, worthless without Cattelan\u2019s association, first debuted at Art Basel Miami on a bare white wall, originally priced at $120,000. It has been eaten more than once<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf \u2018Comedian\u2019 was all about the intangibility of value and how we ascribe value to works of art, \u2018America\u2019 challenges that a step further by being in so many ways, intrinsically valuable, in a manner that so many works of art are not.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Banana<\/p>\n

Watch: Collector eats world-famous $6.2M banana\n <\/p>\n

\"Banana<\/p>\n

Watch: Collector eats world-famous $6.2M banana<\/p>\n

1:38 <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAmerica\u201d is many things: a wry comment on the art world and the United States, as well as an object of torment for arts publicists and their lofty press statements. (The Guggenheim once described it as an opportunity for \u201cunprecedented intimacy with a work of art.\u201d) And this edition may actually be the only physical one in existence, according to Sotheby\u2019s. Though the work is an edition of three, the auction house does not believe the third has been fabricated.\n <\/p>\n

\n Beyond the sculpture\u2019s dramatic history, Galperin said \u201cAmerica\u201d is an important 21st-century artwork, one with a direct lineage to landmark Modern art (see: Marcel Duchamp\u2019s 1917 upside-down urinal \u201cFountain\u201d), but with critical relevance to today.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cCattelan, for his entire career, has critiqued the system,\u201d Galperin said, \u201cwhether it\u2019s the viewers\u2019 experience seeing art in a museum, the way that works of art move through the system, the way that they\u2019re valued, the way that they change hands.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAll of these concepts are things that artworks so rarely confront head on. His ability to do that and do it in such a legible way and impactful way is part of its success here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might be the most famous \u2014 or infamous \u2014 toilet in the world: the 220-pound, 18-karat solid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-252354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}