Gold flush: Ripley buys toilet / art piece for $12.1 million
It was a bold bowl move. Orlando-based Ripley Entertainment has purchased a 18-karat gold toilet at auction for $12.1 million. It’s the most money that the company has ever spent to add to its vast collection of oddities.
Ripley nabbed the fully functional toilet via auction by Sotheby’s New York this month.
“We were the only bidder, which was quite surprising because we thought it was going to fetch a lot more, because the artist himself is quite famous,” said Suzanne Smagala-Potts, senior manager with Ripley.
The piece was one of three identical golden toilets produced by satirical visual artist Maurizio Cattelan, who was born in Italy. In 2016, one version was installed in New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where more than 100,000 visitors lined up to use it as if it were any other public facility. (Folks were allotted five minutes in the Guggenheim restroom.)
That toilet, which became a shiny selfie sensation, was loaned to Blenheim Palace, a British attraction with contemporary art exhibitions, in 2019. Within months it was stolen.
“We, like most authorities – because it was never recovered – assume it was melted down for the gold,” Smagala-Potts said.
Orlando attractions roll out Black Friday ticket deals, other offers
The whereabouts of Cattelan’s third toilet is unknown, making the recent Ripley purchase the only known surviving version.
Ripley has not yet determined where it will display the toilet. The company has dozens of attractions worldwide – many dubbed “odditoriums” – including one on Orlando’s International Drive.
“It is a functional toilet, and we are considering whether or not to make it available [for use] when we put it on display,” Smagala-Potts said. “Nothing’s out of the question yet.”
The Guggenheim’s website says the New York installation there created “an experience of unprecedented intimacy with a work of art.”
Cattelan, now 65, has a history of making news-making art pieces, including “Comedian,” also known as a banana duct-taped to a wall, which was shown at Art Basel Miami in 2019.
“America” is the title he gave the golden toilet.
“This could be a social, it could be a political, but, overall, I think this is a cultural commentary,” Lucius Elliot, head of contemporary art marquee auctions at Sotheby’s, said in a video posted before the auction.
“This is a European artist making a portrait of America – America in all its decadence, in all its beauty, in all its nouveau naffness and in all its total dominion over the entire Western world,” he said.
Ripley has its own history of headline-making purchases at auctions for Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” gown with a $4.8 million bid, Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber for $450,000 as well as a box of chocolates, a prop from “Forrest Gump,” for $25,000.
In the case of “America,” the raw material itself has high value. If melted down, it could bring about $10 million, Ripley said.
“This work, at the very least, is worth its weight in gold,” said David Galperin, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of contemporary art.