Cattelan's golden toilet was sold for 12 million dollars

New York – The golden toilet by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at a New York auction last night for $12.1 million (250 million crowns). This is reported on the website of Sotheby's, which organized the sale. The price, excluding fees and surcharges, roughly corresponds to the value of the material used to create the piece, which the artist describes as a parody of excessive wealth.

Cattelan is known for his provocative and humorous works. Last year, he garnered attention with the sale of his piece Comedian for $6.2 million. The installation consists of a banana taped to the wall, and Cattelan wanted to draw attention to the value that collectors attribute to artworks, even though they are made from elements of negligible market value.

However, this is not the case with America, a fully functional toilet made by Cattelan, which, according to Sotheby's catalog, consists of 101.2 kilograms of 18-carat gold. The price of the metal used by Cattelan has increased about four times since the work was created in 2016. According to ARTnews, an anonymous buyer acquired the piece after a single bid at the starting price of ten million dollars.

The second example of Cattelan's work was melted down, according to investigators, and was stolen by a group of thieves in 2019 from London's Blenheim Palace. Two of the offenders were convicted this year, but the piece itself was never found. The artwork belonged to the Guggenheim Museum, which offered it for loan to the White House in 2017. This was in response to a request from then-President Donald Trump to borrow one of the paintings in the museum's collection.