Sotheby’s auction house’s hopes of a record price for one of the most controversial works of art of the past decade were dashed on Tuesday night. Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat gold toilet, owned by Steve Cohen, sold at auction for just $12.1 million, including fees.
Cattelan is the ninth lot in the house’s “Now & Contemporary” sale USA (2016) – Fully functional toilet – priced at $10 million. The starting price for the piece, which weighs more than 100 kilograms and contains about 2,440 ounces of gold (worth $9.9 million as of Monday night), is tied to the value of the metal. The starting bid was even $10 million, and it was quickly sold to the first bidder; due to expenses, its final price rose to just above its gold value.
Last week, the consignor was revealed to Cohen, who owns the New York Mets and purchased the piece from Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017. Sotheby’s confirmed ahead of the auction that there were no irrevocable bids or guarantees on the work and that the winning bidder would receive payment in cryptocurrency.
Before reaching the block, the sculpture was installed in a bathroom at Sotheby’s New Breuer Building headquarters, where visitors are invited to view it one by one. Unlike earlier facilities, toilet use was strictly prohibited.
USA Has a long and incredible history. The work, one of only two forgeries in the San Plus Two Artists Proof Edition, debuted in a functioning bathroom at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016, with more than 100,000 people waiting in line. A second version of the work, which was exhibited at Blenheim Palace in 2019, was stolen in a notorious smash-and-grab incident and was never recovered, leaving Cohen’s example as the only surviving version.
David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, called “Toilet” “one of Cattelan’s most iconic and influential works,” adding that it “perfectly embodies the artist’s career-long interest in value, absurdity, and institutional critique.”
Cattleya’s The current auction record was set at Christie’s in New York in 2016 with a kneeling sculpture of Little Adolf Hitler, titled, he (2011) sold for $17.2 million and still exists today.
