Just call it the ultimate throne.
An 18-karat-gold toilet entitled America will be the star of a Sotheby’s auction this November. The fully functioning loo comes from the mind of artist Maurizio Cattelan—yes, the man behind that famed duct-taped banana—and, in an auction first, will have a starting bid based on the price of gold on the day of the sale. With bullion’s increasing prices as of late, that figure could be anything; for now, though, the opening bid is set around $10 million.
America is one of two iterations of Cattelan’s gilded latrine. The first one popped up in 2016 at the Guggenheim in New York City, where visitors were invited to use the sculpture. After becoming an Internet sensation (and an art-world provocateur), the toilet moved to England in 2019, where a trio of thieves snatched it from the birthplace of Winston Churchill in a crime straight out of the board game Clue. The piece was never recovered.
Now it’s the second America’s time to shine. The iteration, featuring 101.2 kilograms of gold (223.1 lbs), will be installed as a bathroom in New York’s Breuer Building, which will be the site of Sotheby’s new home in the Big Apple this month. As is usually the case with Cattelan’s pieces, the toilet is full of juxtapositions in its form and material—something that shines a bright light on the art market as a whole.
“America is Maurizio Cattelan’s tour de force. 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,” David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, said in a statement. “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.”
After its appearance at the Breuer Building, the toilet will be offered as part of Sotheby’s the Nowand Contemporary Evening Auction at 7 p.m. on November 18.
This isn’t the first time one of Cattelan’s works causes a stir on the auction market. The artist’s Comedian, the title of that duct-taped banana, fetched a whopping $6.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year. The piece is, well, exactly what it sounds like; a crypto bro named Justin Sun snagged the piece and then promptly ate it. America may have a better fate—as the prime perch in its owner’s en suite, perhaps.
