Italian avant-garde artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “America” toilet is fully functional and identical to the one that gained worldwide fame when it was stolen in a daring heist from Blenheim Palace in England in 2019.
Sotheby’s, the international auction house, announced in late October that it would auction a solid gold toilet by Italian avant-garde artist Maurizio Cattelan, titled “America,” the AP reported.
It is also a fully functional toilet, identical to the one that gained worldwide fame when it was stolen in a daring heist from Blenheim Palace in England in 2019. The starting price of the November 18 auction in New York will be the price of just over 101.2 kilograms of gold used in its manufacture – currently around $10 million.
The head of Sotheby’s contemporary art department in New York was quoted by the AP as saying that Cattelan is “the art world’s best provocateur.” His work “Comic,” a banana stuck on a wall, was sold at auction in New York last year for $6.2 million.
The artist said that “America” doesn’t care about excessive wealth.
“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same when it comes to the toilet,” he once said. Two versions of “America” were created in 2016. The one that will now be offered at auction has belonged to an anonymous collector since 2017.
The other version was displayed in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016. More than 100,000 visitors lined up to – to put it delicately – interact with the work.
The Guggenheim gifted the work to US President Donald Trump during his first term after he asked it to borrow a Van Gogh painting from the museum.
Photo d’illustration par Mauricio Santiago : https://www.pexels.com/photo/led-signage-1264453/
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