A piece of art that is a solid gold toilet could sell for more than $10 million when it goes to auction next month, Sotheby's announced on Friday.
The fully functional, 100kg, 18k gold toilet – called America – was created by artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2016. It will go on the block on November 18, and Sotheby's said it will accept payment in the form of cryptocurrency.
Sotheby's described it as “one of the century’s most influential – and infamous – artworks”.
The starting bid will be determined by the price of the artwork’s weight in gold, rising or falling with the gold market until the auction. Currently, that means bidding would open at about $10 million.
America was installed in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016. Visitors were encouraged to use the toilet, in its original function, and more than 100,000 people queued to experience what the museum called “unprecedented intimacy with a work of art”.
“Cattelan’s incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value has never felt more timely,” Sotheby's said in a release. “The appearance of America at auction will confront the question that has long preoccupied not only Cattelan but also the art world at large, namely: how do we value art?”
The artist has described the artwork as “the art of the 1 per cent for the other 99 per cent”.
America made headlines in 2019 when it was displayed at then stolen from the UK's Blenheim Palace – where former prime minister Winston Churchill was born and buried. Cattelan said following the robbery that “I’ve always loved heist films and at last I’m in one of them”.
The piece will next be installed in a bathroom at New York’s Breuer Building, Sotheby's new home, until the auction.
Cattelan, a self-taught artist from Italy who was a furniture maker before launching his art career, has made history at Sotheby's before. In November 2024, his work Comedian – a banana fastened to a wall with duct tape – sold for $6.2 million.
