Golden opportunity? Museum unveils 18-karat toilet

Cattelan, a Milan-based artist and a truck driver’s son, hinted earlier this year that his creation had been inspired by economic inequality.

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan replaced a “Kohler” toilet in one of the restrooms in the museum with a 18-karat-gold working replica.

The Guggenheim Museum is inviting visitors to do a whole lot more than touch the artwork in its new exhibit opening Friday.

The exhibit is aimed at “making available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the 1 per cent”, the museum says. “Come spend a little alone time with ‘America,’and you can ponder that meaning for yourself”, the museum said in a blog post.

Or, if gold is more your color, you’ll like the Hang Fung Gold Toilet that costs (wait for it) a mere $5 million. As The New Yorker reports, “a uniformed guard will be standing by the door to answer questions, and also, shall we say, to discourage souvenir takers”.

Cattelan has a history of using scatological materials in his work. “It will be kept clean throughout the day, as the Guggenheim does with all of its bathrooms, but not steam cleaning necessarily”.

Cattelan, 55, is known for his provocative sculptures, including La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), which depicted Pope John Paul II floored by a meteorite.

The gold toilet was paid for with private funds by the Guggenheim and nods back to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, a urinal entered in a 1917 art exhibition but never actually shown (it was hidden behind a screen). Duchamp was suggesting that an everyday item could be considered art if an artist presented it as such – kicking off a century of debate. While he prefers that the audience interpret the work, he jokingly called it “one-percent art for the ninety-nine percent”.

A New York Times reporter was able to use the golden throne ahead of its Friday opening to the public, saying it “looks best when in use, sparkling so much it’s nearly too bright to look at, especially during the flush, which may be a new postmodern sublime”.