Millions of dollars may not sound like too much to pay for a golden throne — but what about a flushable one?
An 18-karat gold toilet sold for $12.1 million with fees at a Sotheby’s auction on Tuesday. The sculpture, made by the Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan, is titled “America” and is flushable.
The toilet, which debuted in 2016, consists of 101.2 kg, or about 223 pounds, of 18-karat gold and comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, according to Sotheby’s.
“Feeling flush?” the Sotheby’s auctioneer asked while waiting for bidders.
It’s unclear who bought the toilet.
Prior to the auction, the estimated starting bid was around $10,000,000. Sotheby’s said the starting bid for the piece would be determined by the artwork’s weight in gold, and thus would depend on the fluctuating gold market.
Sotheby’s said the seller of the artwork, who was not publicly identified, acquired it in 2017 from the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York.
The toilet is the second edition of “America.” Another edition of the artwork was famously placed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016 and could be used by visitors, who lined up by the tens of thousands to engage with the artwork, as in, use the toilet.
It was later moved to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, from which it was stolen in 2019. Two people were convicted in the heist earlier this year, but the toilet was not recovered.
Sotheby’s said the piece on sale was the only existing edition of “America.”
Cattelan’s other artworks have also made headlines before. His work “Comedian,” a banana duct-taped to a wall, went viral instantly after its debut in 2019. Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto investor, bought the duct-taped banana for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year.
Sun, billionaire and founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON, said at the time that he planned to “personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience.”
The recent golden toilet sale is also not the most that anyone has paid for a piece of Cattelan’s work.
In 2016, Cattelan’s “Him” — a wax figure of Adolf Hitler kneeling, complete with human hair — sold for $17.2 million at a Christie’s auction.
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