America on the pot

When an 18-karat-gold toilet titled America becomes the star of a Sotheby’s auction, you can’t help but marvel at the irony. A toilet. Made of gold. With a starting bid of $10 million. You could call it satire, commentary, or just plain absurd. But maybe it’s all three.

Maurizio Cattelan, the Italian artist best known for duct-taping a banana to a wall and calling it art, has once again held up a mirror to society, and this time, we’re all sitting on it. Literally, America isn’t just a shiny bathroom fixture; it’s a reflection of what we worship: wealth, excess, and the illusion that luxury can cleanse us of, well, everything else.

Maurizio Cattelan isn’t your typical artist. He’s an artist with a jester’s grin and a knack for stirring the pot. Born in Padua, Italy, in 1960, he built his career on turning the art world’s seriousness into the punchline. He’s the guy who makes you question whether you’re in on the joke or about to become it. From La Nona Ora (a life-size sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite) to Comedian (the banana taped to a wall that somehow sold for $120,000), Cattelan has made a career out of needling institutions that take themselves too seriously. His work dances between the ridiculous and the profound, often landing squarely in both camps at once.

What makes him so relevant now is his talent for reflecting our contradictions with a smirk. In a culture obsessed with money, fame, and the illusion of meaning, Cattelan reminds us that absurdity is often the most actual mirror. Whether it’s a banana or a toilet, his art exposes just how much value we attach to spectacle, and how frequently we mistake gold plating for greatness.

When the first America debuted in 2016 at the Guggenheim, visitors were actually allowed to use it. A symbol of opulence and opportunity, the sculpture was precisely what it appeared to be: a toilet cast entirely in 18-karat gold, polished to a mirror shine. It was installed in a single-stall bathroom like any ordinary fixture. Its gleaming surface transformed an everyday act into a surreal encounter with wealth and absurdity; an opulent object meant to be both admired and, quite literally, sat upon.

What’s more American than that? The rich and poor alike could line up to sit on gold, equal in the most democratic of moments. It was the kind of metaphor that writes itself: you can gild a toilet, but it’s still a toilet.

Fast-forward to today. The latest version weighs over 220 pounds of solid gold and will grace the Breuer Building, once home to the Met’s modern art wing and now the new headquarters of Sotheby’s, before being offered for auction later this month. The starting bid will be based on the current price of gold, which feels fitting. Our values, too, seem to fluctuate with the market.

Cattelan knows exactly how to make people squirm. America is both a punchline and a prophecy. It mocks the very institutions that celebrate it: the museums, the collectors, the spectators who gasp and nod as if enlightenment can be found at the bottom of a gilded bowl. Yet, it also forces us to confront a truth that’s as shiny as it is shameful: in the pursuit of status, we’ve mistaken luxury for value and spectacle for meaning.

Maybe America is the perfect metaphor for where we are right now, a toilet. A gold one, sure, but still a toilet. Beneath all the shine, we’re swirling in social unrest, outrage, and a nonstop war of words. Every headline feels like a shouting match, every conversation a minefield. The hate, the finger-pointing, the political theater; it’s all clogging the system. Cattelan’s golden bowl doesn’t just mock our excess; it mirrors the mess we’ve made, a society so obsessed with appearances that we forget what’s actually being flushed away.

America might be less of a joke and more of a eulogy. A nation of contradictions, sitting proudly on its golden throne, still trying to flush away what it doesn’t want to see.

Now that’s art that hits you where you sit.