An 18-karat gold toilet was sold for $12.1 million (approximately €10.4 million) during a Sotheby’s auction on Tuesday night in New York, United States. Despite the hefty price, the auction fell short of the expectations of the auction house.
The toilet, weighing just over 100 kilograms and containing 2,440 ounces of gold, is the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The sculpture, titled America, was created in 2015 and is, according to the artist, a satire on excessive wealth.
“It doesn’t matter what you eat, a $200 lunch (about €173) or a $2 hot dog (about €1), the results are the same, in bathroom terms,” Cattelan said, as quoted by The Associated Press.
The golden toilet turned art piece was valued at around $10 million (€8.6 million) and was auctioned starting at that price.
However, despite Sotheby’s anticipating a record sale, the sculpture was sold to the first bidder for $10 million, rising to $12.1 million due to fees, according to ARTnews.
Prior to the auction, the fully functional sculpture was installed in a bathroom at the new Sotheby’s headquarters in the Breuer Building for exhibition.
The artwork America features two versions, both created in 2016. The one recently sold belonged to an anonymous collector since 2017, while the other has traveled the world over the past few years.
The other version was displayed in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, where over 100,000 visitors lined up to see… and use it.
In 2019, it was exhibited at Blenheim Palace—where former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born—and was stolen by thieves who invaded the building and removed the toilet from the plumbing. The suspects were arrested and convicted, but the piece was never recovered.
One of Maurizio Cattelan’s major works is the famous Comedian, which consists of a banana duct-taped to a wall. In November 2024, one of the editions was auctioned in New York for $6.2 million (€5.9 million) to a cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
You can see images of the artwork on display at Sotheby’s in the gallery above..
