Twelve million dollars is a lot of money to flush down the toilet, golden though it may be.
That’s how much an 18-karat gold, fully functioning toilet sold for at an auction held by Sotheby’s.
Cheekily titled America, the toilet is a sculpture created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
“It looks like a toilet, but it also looks nothing like a toilet you have ever seen,” says Lucius Elliott, the head of Contemporary Art Marquee Auctions at Sotheby’s. “It is this glimmering, hulking, gluttonous mass of gold. You see yourself in it, you see the water in it, you see the movement, it’s like a mirror of the most decadent sort imaginable.”
“That is what is so fascinating about this work, because unlike pretty much any artwork, this has a material value,” Elliott explains. “This is a European artist making a portrait of America. America in all its decadence, in all its beauty, in all its nouveau naffness, and in all its total dominion over the entire Western world.”
The toilet that sold is actually one of three castings Cattelan created. Another one made headlines for being stolen from an English country house in 2019. That toilet is believed to have been cut up and sold in parts.