Maurizio Cattelan’s shimmering 223-pound (101.2 kg) solid gold toilet sold for $12.1 million with fees at Sotheby’s contemporary auction in its new Breuer Building headquarters tonight, November 18.
Sotheby’s did not list an estimate for Cattelan’s 18-karat metaphor, “America” (2016), but set bids to start at $10 million. Failing to receive more than one bid, the work sold after an awkward minute during which auctioneer Phyllis Kao attempted to draw out more offers using potty-related puns.
Few appeared amused. Kao parried interest among the high-rolling crowd of more than 200 people on the fourth floor of the Madison Avenue auction house plus thousands viewing online, but only one bidder decided to get off the pot and purchased the piece over the phone.
Mets owner Steve Cohen had quietly purchased the second of two editions of the golden loo in 2017 before deciding to part with it this year. His timing couldn’t be better. The price of gold has since risen over 50% in the past year to $131,000 per kilogram as of today, making the sculpture’s value in gold higher than the work’s hammer price.
The precious-metal bathroom fixture is objectively a much better investment than Cattelan’s disquieting duct-taped banana, “Comedian” (2019), purchased for $6.2 million by Chinese crypto billionaire Justin Sun at Sotheby’s last year.
Reportedly valued at $2.5 million in 2016, “America” had been attached to the Guggenheim Museum’s plumbing system, where more than 100,000 visitors took it for a test spin. The Guggenheim offered to loan it to the White House following Trump’s first inauguration. When the White House declined, the museum instead dispatched it to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, for an exhibition of Cattelan’s works in 2019. It was brazenly stolen and never recovered.
The golden chariot was billed as the glistening crown jewel of Sotheby’s Now & Contemporary Evening Auction on November 18, preceded by a special sale of works from the collection of the late Estée Lauder heir Leonard A. Lauder. It was not the priciest work tonight, though. Gustav Klimt’s 1914–16 portrait of Elisabeth Lederer fetched $236.4 million earlier in the evening, becoming the second most expensive work ever sold at auction.
Other works in Sotheby’s contemporary auction included Cecily Brown’s massive “High Society” (1997–98), which sold for $9.8 million; an untitled 2008 Kerry James Marshall painting that was part of the artist’s 2016 retrospective at The Met; and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Crowns (Peso Neto)” (1981), estimated to sell between $35 million and $45 million.
Sotheby’s executives may have hoped that the move to Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist landmark on the Upper East Side would broaden their audience and reinvigorate collectors’ interest after a reported market slowdown. Art auction sales contracted 10% in the first half of the year, the third consecutive year that occurred, according to a Bank of America analysis.
This week’s sales, kicked off by last night’s $609 million auction at Christie’s, headlined by a $62 million Rothko, may bring some new movement to those numbers.
On Thursday, November 20, Sotheby’s will offer works from the collection of Cindy and Jay Pritzker, including Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 oil painting “Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre (Romans parisiens).” Other highlights that evening will include the Frida Kahlo oil painting “El sueño (La cama)” (1940), projected to fetch up to $60 million, and René Magritte’s “Le Jockey perdu” (1942).
Those who missed out on Cattelan’s gold toilet shouldn’t fret. Sotheby’s other bathrooms work perfectly well, too.
