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For sale: The world’s most valuable toilet, a toilet literally worth its weight in gold.
Sotheby’s announced Friday that it will auction a solid gold tank created by an Italian artist maurizio cattelan Officer “America,
The auction house called it “a sharp commentary on the clash of artistic production and commodity value.” It is a fully functional toilet, similar to the one that gained global fame when it was stolen from England in an audacious robbery. Blenheim Palace In 2019.
Starting price in the auction of November 18 new york The 101.2 kilograms (223 pounds) of gold used to make it would be worth about $10 million in current terms.
David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s in New York, said Cattelan is “the quintessential art world writer.”
He is one of the most successful artists, an artist whose work “Comedian”, a banana stuck to a wall, sold for $6.2 million at a New York auction last year. “Him” – Cattelan’s unmoving statue of a kneeling Hitler – sold for $17.2 million at a Christie’s auction in 2016.
The artist has said that “America” satirizes excessive wealth.
He once said, “Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same in terms of the toilet.”
Two versions of “America” were made in 2016. The one being sold has been owned by an anonymous collector since 2017.
A second version was displayed in the bathroom of the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016. More than 100,000 visitors – to put it delicately – stood in line to interact with the work.
Guggenheim offered this work to the US President donald trump During his first term in office he asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting.
In 2019 it went on display at Blenheim Palace, the English country manor that was the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Within days it was stolen by thieves, who broke into the building, forcibly pulled it from the pipeline and fled.
Two men were convicted and jailed earlier this year. The toilet was never recovered. Investigators believe it was possibly broken and melted.
Galperin is unwilling to speculate on how much “America” might sell for. He notes that Cattelan’s duct-taped banana raised questions about “how one gives importance to something that, fundamentally, has no value other than its authorship and its conceptual idea.
“‘America’ is in many ways the exact opposite of that. It’s perfect in the sense that this work has a lot of intrinsic value in a way that most artworks don’t,” he said, adding, “The question of the ratio of value between the raw material and the artistic idea is on the table here.”
“America” will be on display at Sotheby’s new New York headquarters, the Breuer Building, from November 8 until the auction. It will be in the bathroom, and visitors will be able to see it up close and personal – but not use it.
At the Guggenheim and Blenheim Palace, the toilet was connected to the plumbing system and visitors could book a 3-minute appointment to use it. This time, visitors won’t be able to use it – they can look but not flush.