NEW YORK – A toilet has been installed at the fourth floor bathroom of New York’s Guggenheim museum for the private use of the public, providing them an opportunity to relieve themselves. But this newest site-specific artwork should not be mistaken for a common toilet.
The 18-karat gold commode can be used as if an ordinary unisex toilet by the museum’s visitors, said Katherine Brinson, curator of contemporary art at the museum.
The installation – “America” – is the first piece that Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has exhibited since his 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, the Huffington Post reported.
You’ll just have to pay the compulsory $15 admission fee at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to do so.
According to Fox News, the golden thrown will require cleaning crews to use medical wipes to clean The Toilet after each user, regularly steaming and polishing it to keep the 18-karat glimmer in check.
Guards will be posted outside the bathroom door, said the museum, which has refused to put a dollar value on the piece.
The Toilet functions as homage to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” that other famous artsy receptacle – a ready-made sculpture that looked just like a urinal, because it was one. According to the Guggenheim, The Toilet also alludes to Piero Manzoni’s “Artist’s Shit (1961),” for which Manzoni supposedly sold his own excrement for a cost equivalent to its own weight in gold.
Brinson said the work had “many layers, many possible interpretative lenses that one can bring to it.”
“One can see the title as a critique but also as idealistic. After all this is a work about creating access and opportunity for all for a very wide public, even though it is this lavish luxury item.”
