Gold Toilet "America" Sells for $12.1 Million While Klimt Portrait Sets $236 Million Modern Art Record

The golden toilet artwork titled "America" was displayed at Sotheby's New York headquarters before being auctioned off.

A Gustav Klimt portrait reached a record-breaking price of $236 million at an auction on Tuesday, setting a new benchmark for modern art. During the same event, a functional solid gold toilet that satirizes extreme wealth was sold for $12.1 million.

Created by Maurizio Cattelan, the provocative Italian artist famous for his banana taped to a wall installation, the golden toilet was presented at Sotheby's auction in New York with bidding starting around $10 million. The artwork weighs 101 kilograms (223 pounds) and is crafted from 18-karat gold.

Cattelan named the piece "America" and intended it as a commentary on excessive wealth. He once remarked, "Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise." Sotheby's described the commode as an "incisive commentary on the collision of artistic production and commodity value."

Earlier in the auction, Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" sold after an intense 20-minute bidding war, becoming the most valuable artwork ever sold by Sotheby's globally. This Austrian masterpiece is one of the few that survived World War II intact. It portrays the young daughter of one of Klimt's patrons and was fortunately separated from his other works that were destroyed in a fire at an Austrian castle.

The painting came from the collection of billionaire Leonard A. Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder Companies cosmetics empire, who passed away earlier this year.

The auctioned toilet is one of two created by Cattelan in 2016. Its counterpart was exhibited at New York's Guggenheim Museum that same year, gaining notoriety when the museum offered to lend it to US President Donald Trump after he requested to borrow a Van Gogh painting. The other golden toilet was later stolen while on display at Blenheim Palace in England, Winston Churchill's birthplace.

Two individuals were convicted for the theft, but the toilet's fate remains unknown. Investigators believe it was likely dismantled and melted down.

The "America" toilet that sold at auction was exhibited at Sotheby's New York headquarters for several weeks before the sale.