If you've ever dreamed of owning a solid 18 karat gold toilet, now might be your chance.
"America," the fully working solid gold toilet sculpture created by artist Maurizio Cattelan is heading to auction at Sotheby's for the first time ever. Bidding is set to start at roughly $10 million, give or take a little, depending on the price of gold when the auction begins on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. in New York City, where Sotheby's is newly headquartered.
Art is subjective, which has rarely been more obvious than in discussions surrounding Cattelan's work. Cattelan is the same artist behind "Comedian," the duct-taped banana that crytpo financier Justin Sun purchased in 2024 for $6.2 million.
“This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community," Sun told The New York Times last year. "I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.”
Maurizio Cattelan in 2019. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)Cattelan created a pair of the golden toilets in 2016. One was sold to a private collector, and the second was installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum that same year, where more than 100,000 visitors actually used the functioning toilet.
The toilet was later loaned to Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, England where it was stolen by thieves in a shockingly bold heist. They not only removed the piece from its plumbing, but even managed to cause a flood in the room where it had been on display.
Security footage shown at the burglars' trial displayed two vehicles driving through the Great Courtyard, and even showed one burglar leaving the museum with the golden toilet seat in hand. The work was ultimately recovered. Prosecutors spent four years working on the case before officially charging the thieves, and two were found guilty by a jury. A third was acquitted.
At the time, Cattelan said that while the burglary wasn't “exactly the heist of the century,” it was “one of the most bizarre.”
With the auction on the horizon, Sotheby's hopes the toilet will help breathe much-needed life into the world of contemporary art, which has seen a supply greatly outweigh demand in recent years.
“It started from something very practical: in a museum there are many sacred spaces, and only one that never is: the bathroom," said Cattelan.
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