One yr after Sotheby’s drew international consideration with the $6.2m sale of Maurizo Cattelan’s Comic (2019)—a banana duct-taped to a wall—the artist and the public sale home are set to make a splash once more. Sotheby’s will supply an version of the artist’s absolutely functioning gold rest room, America (2016), throughout its night public sale of latest artwork in New York on 18 November.
Bidding for the work—crafted from stable 18-karat gold and modeled after a typical Kohler rest room—will start on the present market worth of the gold used within the sculpture, estimated at round $10m primarily based on its weight, based on Sotheby’s. (That valuation might fluctuate between now and the date of the sale as the worth of gold has been whizzing up recently.) Throughout the public sale preview (8-17 November), America will likely be put in in a toilet at Sotheby’s new Breuer Constructing headquarters. Guests will likely be allowed inside one after the other for a close-up viewing, however is not going to be permitted to make use of the bathroom.
If America goes effectively past its $10m estimate, it may change into primary on his checklist of all-time public sale outcomes. If it surpasses its estimate however falls wanting the $15.2m ($17.2m with charges) fetched by Him (2001)—Cattelan’s hyperrealist sculpture of a diminutive, kneeling Adolf Hitler—at a Christie’s sale in New York in 2016, will probably be quantity two.
Sotheby’s notes that this model of America is the one surviving version. One other was put in on the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the place greater than 100,000 guests used it throughout its year-long show. That version was later moved to Blenheim Palace within the UK in 2019, the place it was stolen simply two days after set up. Two males have been convicted in reference to the theft earlier this yr, and investigators consider the bathroom was melted down and destroyed.
Created in 2016—the identical yr Donald Trump received his first US presidential election—the work’s title and gold materials have led to interpretations connecting it with American politics and extra. Cattelan has mentioned that he didn’t anticipate Trump’s rise when conceiving the piece; he first proposed the sculpture in mid-2015, shortly after Trump introduced his candidacy. When the White Home later requested to borrow Vincent van Gogh’s Panorama With Snow (1888) from the Guggenheim, curator Nancy Spector declined and provided America as an alternative, a proposal the White Home didn’t settle for.
Cattelan has described the sculpture’s Trump connection as “one other layer” of that means, including that “it shouldn’t be the one one”. Like Comic, America is commonly interpreted as a mirrored image on wealth and energy, poking enjoyable on the absurdities of the artwork market and the rich patrons who drive it. Subsequent month, a kind of patrons may plunk down a severe wad of cash to take house this singular trophy.
