Gold toilet opens for business at Guggenheim

Artist Maurizio Cattelan designed an 18-carat sold-gold toilet and installed it in a small restroom two-thirds of the way up the spiral staircase in the Guggenheim Museum that anyone can use to. um. relieve themselves.

The masterpiece was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, and it’s far more than a treat for the eye. Yes, if you so wish, you can defecate into Cattelan’s luxury appliance, fulfilling your morose dream to shit on a piece of contemporary art. No, really – the museum on Fifth Avenue replaced a regular porcelain toilet in one of its unisex bathrooms, so for a limited time only, you can go to the bathroom on a gold toilet.

The museum says Cattelan intends visitors to use is just like any other toilet in the building.

But what are we actually to make of what appears to be a simple golden toilet masquerading as art?

The museum says the exhibit “offers a wink to the excesses of the art market but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all”.

Museum officials are expecting large crowds so the artwork has its own full-time security guard to monitor guest usage and check in after each use to ensure the valuable toilet is not vandalized.

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.

He said: “I’m happy because it’s not on a pedestal, it’s not in a gallery”.

“There’s the risk that people will think of it as a joke, maybe, but I don’t see it as a joke”, he explained to The New York Times.

The exhibit has also drawn comparisons with Marcel Duchamp’s avant-garde “Fountain“, the porcelain urinal he exhibited in NY in 1917, causing a sensation in the art world.