Cattelan's Golden Toilet Sells for a Tepid $12.1 Million, Signaling a Shift in Art Market Appetite

2 hours ago7 min read3 comments

The auction of Maurizio Cattelan's 'America,' a fully functional 18-karat gold toilet, concluded not with a celebratory roar but with a deflating silence. The work sold for a final price of $12.1 million at Sotheby's, a figure that fell short of expectations and left a palpable sense of anticlimax in the salesroom. For a full minute, the auctioneer's pleas for another bid echoed unanswered, a stark contrast to the fevered bidding wars that often define high-profile contemporary art sales.The piece, which boasts a storied history including an installation in a Guggenheim Museum restroom, a controversial loan offer to the White House, and a notorious unsolved theft from Blenheim Palace, failed to translate its notoriety into financial triumph. Cattelan, renowned for provocative works like the duct-taped banana and the meteorite-struck pope, created 'America' as a scathing critique of wealth inequality and the absurdities of value.The toilet invited the elite to literally excrete on opulence, turning a symbol of luxury into a functional, democratic object. However, the lukewarm market reception suggests that the provocative power of such blatant critique may be waning.The tepid bidding indicates a potential fatigue within the art market, a moment where spectacle alone is insufficient to mask fundamental questions about an object's intrinsic worth. The golden toilet's failure to ignite a financial frenzy serves as a sobering reflection on the sustainability of art as a purely speculative asset and hints that the era of its most luxurious provocations may be quietly draining away.

#Maurizio Cattelan

#America

#golden toilet

#art auction

#Sotheby's

#contemporary art

#featured

#$12.1 million

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