{"id":24335,"date":"2025-10-31T17:43:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24335\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T17:43:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:43:26","slug":"sothebys-to-sell-maurizio-cattelans-golden-toilet-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24335\/","title":{"rendered":"Sotheby’s to Sell Maurizio Cattelan’s Golden Toilet in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMaurizio Cattelan stole the show<\/a> at last year\u2019s fall marquee auctions in New York with his banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby\u2019s<\/a>. During this November\u2019s fall sales, the Italian conceptual prankster is likely to make a bigger splash, after Sotheby\u2019s announced that it is selling his infamous 18-karat, solid gold toilet.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitled America (2016), the work will be installed in a bathroom in the Breuer Building, Sotheby\u2019s new HQ, and visitors will be invited to view it one-by-one from November 8. Despite it being a fully functioning toilet, and the fact that museum-goers have previously been free to relieve themselves via the artwork, there will be a ban on the can this time around. <\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd in an auction first, when the 100-kilogram toilet hits the block at the house\u2019s \u201cThe Now and Contemporary\u201d evening sale on November 18, the starting bid will be determined by the price of the work\u2019s weight in gold. That is expected to be around $10 million. \u201cCattelan\u2019s incisive\u00a0commentary\u00a0on the collision of artistic production and commodity value\u00a0has never\u00a0felt\u00a0more\u00a0timely,\u201d Sotheby\u2019s said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmerica is an edition of three plus two artist proofs. The version coming to Sotheby\u2019s was made in 2016 and was acquired by the present owner in 2017 from Marian Goodman Gallery.\u00a0Sotheby\u2019s confirmed to ARTnews that the work does not carry an irrevocable bid ahead of the sale. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmerica made its exhibition debut at New York\u2019s Guggenheim Museum in 2016. Back then, visitors were encouraged to use the toilet, also installed into one of the museum\u2019s rotunda bathrooms, as they would any other. More than 100,000 people lined up to create their own masterpiece in what the museum dubbed \u201cunprecedented intimacy with a work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThree years later, the golden sculpture\u2019s notoriety reached new heights when it was exhibited in the UK at Blenheim Palace, the 18th-century stately home and UNESCO world heritage site that\u2019s the former home of Winston Churchill. In an audacious smash-and-grab (\u00e0 la Louvre jewel heist<\/a>), thieves stole the plumbed-in golden toilet. That particular version, which was valued at $6 million, has never been recovered. Police believe it was broken into pieces and dumped. Three British men were eventually convicted for their role in the theft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmerica\u00a0is among Cattelan\u2019s most iconic and influential works,\u201d David Galperin, Sotheby\u2019s head of contemporary art, told ARTnews. \u201cThis work marked his return to art-making after a five-year hiatus, following the announcement of his retirement on the occasion of his Guggenheim retrospective. It perfectly encapsulates the ideas and conceptual currents that Cattelan has pursued over the course of his decades-long career, taking a piercing look at the systems that shape the art world and our broader cultural landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are unmistakable parallels between Cattelan\u2019s toilet and Marcel Duchamp\u2019s iconic, ready-made urinal artwork, titled Fountain (1917). Galperin said America is \u201calmost impossible to explain without referencing Duchamp\u2019s\u00a0fountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cCattelan revisits the original provocation of Duchamp\u2019s gesture, but turns it further on its head. Whereas Duchamp took a readymade object and elevated it to the status of art through contextualizing it as an artwork, Cattelan re-creates the readymade entirely, fashioning an exact functioning replica out of gold. And rather than putting it on a pedestal in a gallery, Cattelan enters the museum through the most unexpected of contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, after Sotheby\u2019s announced that it would accept cryptocurrency for Cattelan\u2019s banana duct-taped to a wall, it was bought<\/a> by Chinese-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who later ate<\/a> it. Crypto-enthusiast collectors Ryan Zurrer and Cozomo de\u2019 Medici (a pseudonym) also chased the lot<\/a>. Sotbeby\u2019s will again be accepting crypto for America, and the house is expecting interest from \u201cseasoned, established collectors of contemporary art, as [much as] new ones, that includes those collectors who are active in the crypto community,\u201d Galperin said.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing is certain: whoever buys America next month will end up sitting on an absolute fortune. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maurizio Cattelan stole the show at last year\u2019s fall marquee auctions in New York with his banana duct-taped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15680,15681,9,11,10,13851],"class_list":{"0":"post-24335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-2025-fall-auction-sales","9":"tag-maruzio-cattelan","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-sothebys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}