Maurizio Cattelan’s Infamous 18-Karat Gold Toilet Is Headed to Auction
America will be installed at the historic Breuer building in New York from November 8
Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous 18-karat gold toilet is headed to auction at Sotheby’s this month with an expected starting bid in the region of $10 million. Sotheby’s has announced in an auction first that the starting bid will be the price of the work’s weight in gold, which will be determined on the day of sale. The work, titled America (2016), is a fully functional toilet, and it will be installed at the historic Breuer building.
It will lead “The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction” on November 18. “America is Maurizio Cattelan’s tour de force,” says David Galperin, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art. “Holding both a proverbial and literal mirror to the art world, the work confronts the most uncomfortable questions about art, and the belief systems held sacred to the institutions of the market and the museum. In his grandest Duchampian gesture, Cattelan unravels a century of art history while imagining a new way of thinking: with his characteristic fearlessness, conceptual genius, and searing humor.”
The work first created a stir when it was installed at the Guggenheim Museum in 2016, where over 100,000 people lined up to use it. It made headlines again in 2019 when it was stolen from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. It took a group of thieves less than five minutes to complete the smash-and-grab job, which left water gushing from the pipes that damaged the 18th-century building. The toilet had marked Cattelan’s return to art making following a self-imposed five-year retirement.
While the fate of that work remains unknown, the piece headed to auction is the only extant version of the piece.