In 2016, the modern artwork world welcomed a piece that was uncommon, to say the least: América, a useful bathroom made fully of 18-carat gold, designed by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Three years later, the work was stolen from an English palace. A glance again on the historical past of the world’s most costly throne!
A golden throne for biting satire
America was a sculpture within the form of a totally useful strong gold bathroom. Composed of 103 kilos of gold, its metallic worth at the moment could be round €10 million!
Proposed as a participatory artwork piece, it was put in in a toilet on the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and guests may actually sit there and relieve themselves. Past the astonishment and fascination, América carried an acerbic message, reflecting the contradictions of our instances.
Gold, luxurious and the absurd
As is commonly the case with Cattelan, the work performs on contrasts. Right here, an on a regular basis, trivial object, an emblem of intimacy and generally disgrace, is reworked into an artefact of maximum wealth. This isn’t simply an aesthetic provocation: América embodies a scathing critique of capitalism, ostentation and the phantasm of grandeur. The very title of the work, evocative of a distorted American dream, suggests a satire of the tradition of extra and consumerism.
The artist claimed that it was “the artwork of the 1% for the opposite 99%”. – which means artwork by the richest individuals on the planet for everybody else!
A rest room supplied to Donald Trump
In September 2017, the White Home requested the Guggenheim Museum in New York for the mortgage of a Van Gogh portray for Donald Trump’s personal flats. The museum refused however supplied to lend America with out ever getting a response from the White Home!
It must be mentioned that America is also an evocation of Donald Trump’s profession, recalling the gilding of the President’s actual property tasks and personal residences. With out denying this which means, the artist has by no means confirmed it, stating that the hyperlink with Trump “is one other facet, but it surely shouldn’t be the one one”.
An unimaginable theft worthy of a movie
However América didn’t simply make its mark for its type or its message. In September 2019, whereas it was put in within the bathrooms of Blenheim Palace in England, the work was stolen. The well-organised thieves ripped out the bathrooms in the midst of the evening, inflicting intensive harm to the constructing’s historic pipes. The spectacular act made headlines in lots of media around the globe. Cattelan, true to his black humour, declared: “I’ve all the time cherished heist movies and eventually I’m in one in every of them”.
A couple of months later, when Maurizio Cattelan was suspected of getting organised the theft himself, the Generali insurance coverage firm teamed up with him for a promotional marketing campaign for an insurance coverage coverage devoted to collectors!
Since that day, América has by no means been discovered. Some assume it was melted all the way down to promote its gold, others think about it lies within the secret assortment of an artwork lover as rich as he’s deviant.
A masterpiece of irony and subversion
Maurizio Cattelan, recognized for his provocative works such because the Pope crushed by a meteorite (La Nona Ora) or the well-known banana-scotch (Comic), indicators with América an excellent manifesto of social derision. It questions our relationship to worth, artwork, energy and decadence.
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