Artist Behind Duct-Taped Banana Has New Test for Art Market: A Gold Toilet
Sotheby’s plans to kick off bids for Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat masterpiece at $10 million; no sitting on this throne
Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘America’ (2016) is a fully functional toilet, fashioned from solid gold. Sotheby’s
An artist sculpted a toilet out of 223 pounds of gold, a weight valued at about $10 million in current gold markets. Sotheby’s is betting it can auction off the golden bowl for even more.
The 18-karat toilet was created by Maurizio Cattelan, the same impish artist behind last year’s $6.2 million duct-tape banana.
Next month, the auction house will set its starting bid for Cattelan’s fully functioning toilet at the $10 million mark, or whatever the daily rate in gold markets would be for a 101.2-kilogram chunk on the day of the sale, Nov. 18. But watch this throne: Sotheby’s expects it to serve as a rare and wry test of art’s appeal beyond its material worth as a precious metal. Cryptocurrency will also be accepted.
Just don’t try before you buy. Ahead of the sale, Sotheby’s expert David Galperin said the house will install the golden loo in a fourth-floor bathroom within its new Manhattan headquarters. Potential bidders will be allowed to see it in situ, he said, but they won’t be allowed to use it.
“We don’t want people sitting on the art,” Galperin said.
Cattelan is known for making sculptures that explore social and historical taboos. The Italian artist’s 2016 commode has a storied history that predates last year’s banana bonanza, when his fruit duct-taped to a wall, “Comedian,” caused a pop-culture stir and even buoyed confidence in the slumping art market after selling for quadruple its $1.5 million high estimate.
“It’s the perfect sequel to the banana, even though he made it earlier,” Galperin said of Cattelan’s toilet.
The genius of Cattelan’s work lies in his interrogation of the notions of value in art. ‘Comedian,’ a banana duct-taped to the wall, sold for $6.2 million last year. John Nacion/Getty Images
The artist initially intended to create five matching versions of his toilet, which he titled “America” as a way to question which spaces in a museum get deemed sacred versus profane.
Cattelan said Thursday he wanted to put something shiny and expensive in an overlooked spot. “In the end, we are all the same,” he said, “and we remember it right there, in the least noble and most necessary place.”
The first example was installed in a bathroom at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016.
The piece proved an immediate hit, with critics comparing it to ready-made master Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 porcelain urinal, “Fountain.” A steady stream of 100,000 visitors lined up to see—and use—Cattelan’s creation. A museum guard stood outside the bathroom, and janitors cleaned the piece every 15 minutes or so.
Rising gold prices also played a role in its lore.
During its initial run at the Guggenheim, the piece was said to be worth about $2 million. Three years later, the Guggenheim sent its commode to England’s Blenheim Palace, where it was installed in Winston Churchill’s wood-paneled bathroom. By that time, gold prices had climbed and the piece was worth at least $4 million.
One night in 2019, thieves wielding sledgehammers broke into Blenheim, ripped out the toilet and fled with it, causing flooding issues at the 18th-century home. Several men were later arrested for the crime.