The hopes for one of many previous decade’s most controversial artworks attaining a document worth circled on the drain at Sotheby’s on Tuesday night. Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat gold bathroom, owned by Steve Cohen, fetched simply $12.1 million (inclusive of charges) after one bid.
The ninth lot of the home’s “The Now & Modern” sale, Cattelan’s America (2016)—the totally purposeful bathroom—hammered for $10 million. The work, which weighs simply over 100 kilograms and accommodates roughly 2,440 ounces of gold (price $9.9 million as of Monday night), got here to public sale with a beginning bid pegged to the worth of its metallic alone. Bidding began at an excellent $10 million and bought rapidly to the primary bidder; its remaining worth rose to only above its price in gold due to charges.
The consignor was revealed final week to Cohen, who owns the New York Mets proprietor and bought the piece from Marian Goodman Gallery in 2017. Sotheby’s confirmed forward of the sale that the work did not carry an irrevocable bid, or a assure, and that cryptocurrency could be accepted for cost by the profitable bidder.
Earlier than hitting the block, the sculpture was put in inside a toilet at Sotheby’s new Breuer Constructing headquarters, the place guests have been invited to view it one-by-one. In contrast to earlier installations, the bathroom was strictly off-limits to be used.
America has an extended and inconceivable historical past. One in every of solely two fabricated examples of the version of three plus two artist proofs, the work debuted in a functioning lavatory at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016, the place greater than 100,000 folks queued for his or her flip. The second model of the work, exhibited at Blenheim Palace in 2019, was stolen in an notorious smash-and-grab and has by no means been recovered—leaving Cohen’s instance as the one extant model.
David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of up to date artwork, referred to as the bathroom “amongst Cattelan’s most iconic and influential works,” including that it “completely encapsulates the artist’s career-long curiosity in worth, absurdity, and institutional critique.”
Cattelan’s present public sale document, made at Christie’s New York in 2016 when his sculpture of a tiny kneeling Adolf Hitler, titled, Him (2011) bought for $17.2 million, nonetheless stands.
