One of the world’s most lucrative latrines, a solid gold, fully functional toilet, is up for auction Tuesday evening in New York City.
The piece – made by artist Maurizio Cattelan, who’s known for taping a banana to a wall – begins at a starting bid of the market value of the 101-kilogram (223-pound), 18-karat-gold work, currently about $10 million.
The banana piece, named “Comedian,” sold at a New York auction last year for $6.2 million. “Him” – Cattelan’s unsettling sculpture of a kneeling Hitler – sold for $17.2 million at a Christie’s auction in 2016.
The provocative Italian artist has said the piece, titled “America,” satirizes superwealth.
“Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise,” Cattelan once said. Sotheby's, for its part, calls the commode an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value.”
Owned by an unnamed collector, it's one of two such toilets that Cattelan created in 2016.
The other one was displayed in 2016 at New York's Guggenheim Museum, which pointedly offered to lend it to U.S. President Donald Trump when he asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting. Then the piece was stolen while on display in England at Blenheim Palace, the country manor where Winston Churchill was born.
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 will be not able to use it -- they can look but they can’t flush.
Two men were convicted in the toilet heist, but it's unclear what they did with the loo. Investigators aren't privy to its whereabouts but believe it probably was broken up and melted down.
“America” was exhibited at Sotheby’s New York headquarters in the weeks leading up to the auction.
David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s in New York, said Cattelan is “the consummate art world provocateur.”
