How much would one be willing to pay for a toilet? It could be as much as $12.1 million or ₹ 1070.92 crore if it comes in 18-karat gold and carries the signature of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
That’s the amount his toilet sculpture titled America, weighing 101.2 kg, fetched at a Sotheby’s auction on November 18. The bidding began at around $10 million, based on the price of the gold it carried on the given day.
Belonging to a collector who had acquired it in 2017 from the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, this is one of the editions of the flushable artwork made by Cattelan. Another edition was famously placed at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, where it could be used by visitors and often had a queue of people lined up to take a look. The museum had also reportedly offered to lend it to US President Donald Trump when he had asked to borrow a Vincent van Gogh painting.
In 2019, it was moved to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, from where it was stolen. Two people were convicted for robbery earlier this year, but the toilet was never recovered, and it is believed that it was melted for its gold. A note on the sculpture on the Sotheby’s website states: “At every juncture, America — much like its conceptual forefather, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain — has been championed, scandalised and credited with fostering a revolutionary discourse on what art should mean and what that meaning is worth. Today, however, with the value of art scrutinised at every turn, America constitutes a kind of checkmate, opposing even Cattelan’s most caustic adversaries with the absolute objectivity of its value.”
Cattelan has previously garnered attention for his satirical and provocative themes. Among others, he is also the artist behind the 2019 Comedian, the banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year. In 2016, his wax figure of Adolf Hitler kneeling sold for $17.2 million at a Christie’s auction.
