Even though I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I've never shit in a golden toilet. I'm looking forward to that.
That's what Edward Spencer-Churchill, the initiator of a foundation that organizes art exhibitions at Blenheim Palace, said when it became clear that the artwork "America" had found a new home there in the spring of 2019.
But the joy at the castle in Oxfordshire, where the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born in 1874, was short-lived. That same autumn, the toilet, which was in use, was stolen in a nighttime robbery.
This summer, two men were sentenced to prison for the theft, but the toilet – a work by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan presented as a contemporary answer to Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal – has never been recovered.
The work was created in two copies, however, and now the second one is being offered by the auction house Sotheby's in New York. The starting price is set to correspond to the price of the more than 100 kilograms of gold used to create the work. Currently around 10 million dollars, just under 95 million kronor, according to the news agency AP.
"America" goes under the hammer on November 18.
Maurizio Cattelan has made a name for himself as a provocateur. Last year, his work “Comedian,” a banana taped to a wall in silver, sold for $6.2 million. His work “Him,” a kneeling Adolf Hitler, sold for $17.2 million in 2016.
