Sotheby's auction house announced on Friday the auction sale of a solid gold toilet – a sculpture by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan titled "America," UNN reports with reference to AP.
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It is known that this is a fully functional toilet, identical to the one that gained worldwide fame after the audacious robbery of Blenheim Palace in England in 2019.
The starting price at the November 18 auction in New York will be equal to the value of just over 101.2 kg (223 pounds) of gold used to make it – currently about $10 million.
David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's New York auction house, called Cattelan "the ultimate provocateur in the art world."
He is also one of the most successful artists, whose work "Comedian" – a banana taped to a wall – was sold at auction in New York last year for $6.2 million. "Him" – Cattelan's disturbing sculpture depicting a kneeling Adolf Hitler – was sold for $17.2 million at Christie's in 2016.
A banana taped together with duct tape sold at auction for a record $6.2 million21.11.24, 15:49
"Whatever you eat, a $200 dinner or a $2 hot dog, the result is the same when it comes to the toilet," he once said.
Two versions of "America" were created in 2016. The one being sold has belonged to an unnamed collector since 2017.
The other version was exhibited in the restroom of the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016. More than 100,000 visitors lined up to – to put it mildly – interact with the work.
The Guggenheim Museum offered the work to US President Donald Trump during his first presidential term after he requested to borrow a Van Gogh painting.
In 2019, the painting was exhibited at Blenheim Palace, an English country estate where Winston Churchill was born. A few days later, it was stolen by robbers who broke into the building, ripped it from the plumbing, and fled.