See Photos Of 18-Karat Gold Toilet Sold For $12m

A gold toilet has sold for $12.1m (£9.3m) at auction, after its first casting was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019.

America, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, is a fully functional toilet, fashioned from more than 15st 13lb (101.2kg) of solid 18-carat gold.

The first version of the work was initially installed in a public bathroom at the Guggenheim museum in New York in 2016, but hit the news again three years later when a gang of thieves stole it from the Oxfordshire palace.

The existence of a second golden toilet was later revealed, and it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York City on Tuesday.

The 101 kg toilet received just one bid.

The auction house said that in a world first, the starting bid would be determined by the exact price of its weight in gold, at about $10m (£7.6m).

It said the buyer was a famous American brand.

The artwork achieved the second-highest price for a Cattelan piece at auction.

His sculpture of a kneeling Hitler sold for $17.2m (£11.9m) in 2016.

It is estimated that more than 100,000 people used the first toilet while it was at the Guggenheim before it was moved and exhibited at Blenheim Palace.

Sotheby’s revealed that Cattelan created three toilets in 2016, with the second version on display in a bathroom at New York’s Breuer Building until it went under the hammer.

The auction house described it as a “cultural phenomenon” and an “incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value”.

David Galperin, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s New York, called it Cattelan’s “tour de force”.

“Holding both a proverbial and literal mirror to the art world, the work confronts the most uncomfortable questions about art, and the belief systems held sacred to the institutions of the market and the museum,” he said.