Cattelan's Golden Toilet Sells for a Tepid $12.1 Million in Market Reality Check

3 hours ago7 min read2 comments

The auction of Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘America,’ an 18-karat gold toilet, concluded not with a celebratory roar but with a muted whimper. The fully functional artwork, which once invited Guggenheim visitors to a three-minute audience, sold for a final price of $12.1 million—a figure that fell notably short of pre-sale expectations, which had soared as high as $20 million. For a full minute, the auctioneer's plea for another bid echoed in a silent room, a stark contrast to the frantic energy typically associated with high-profile art sales.This anticlimactic finale served as its own piece of performance art, revealing the art market's capricious appetite for spectacle. The piece's history is integral to its mythos: first installed as a working fixture that democratized a symbol of extreme wealth, it was later stolen in a still-unsolved 2019 heist from Blenheim Palace, adding layers of crime and vulnerability to its provocative narrative.Yet, at Sotheby's, that potent symbolism failed to generate the anticipated financial pressure. The sale price, while substantial, registers as a market correction—a signal that the art world's fascination with Cattelan's prankish critique may be waning. Ultimately, ‘America,’ a work designed to lampoon excess and the whims of value, became a casualty of the very market forces it sought to expose, its worth determined not by its conceptual daring but by the sober calculus of the auction floor.

#Maurizio Cattelan

#America

#golden toilet

#art auction

#Sotheby's

#$12.1 million

#contemporary art

#featured

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