"If the soul weighs 21 grams what is the value of art? It's one of those unanswerable questions that resurfaced this Tuesday at an auction house in New York. It did so because Sotheby's which is inaugurating its new headquarters in the brutalist masterpiece by Marcel Breuer that once housed the Whitney Museum offered its clients America, a toilet made of solid gold by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan."
"The painting, a true rarity, belonged to the spectacular collection of the recently deceased cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder, and has now gone down in history as the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at auction, a record previously held by Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) by Pablo Picasso ($179.4 million). It is also the second most expensive artwork ever sold, behind only Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci ($450 million)."
"The starting price of the toilet $10 million was the same amount it would cost to purchase a toilet made from that much precious metal, based on today's market price. So perhaps the value of the art could be calculated by subtracting from the highest bid what anyone would have to pay simply to own such a large and costly quantity of raw material (102.8 kilograms of 18-karat gold)."
Sotheby's inaugurated its new Marcel Breuer headquarters by auctioning major works, including Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which sold for $236.4 million. The Klimt came from Leonard Lauder's collection and set the record for the most expensive modern artwork sold at auction, contributing to a $527.5 million total from the Lauder sales. Maurizio Cattelan's solid-gold toilet America carried a $10 million starting price tied to metal value and ultimately sold for $12.1 million after a single bid. The sales provided a boost to a market that contracted 12% amid economic uncertainty.
Read at english.elpais.com
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