AFPThe golden toilet of Cattelan
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 09:06
Four men are being prosecuted for the theft of an 18-carat gold toilet bowl at Britain’s Blenheim Palace. The toilet bowl was made by the renowned Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The artwork was on loan from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to Blenheim Palace when it was stolen in 2019.
The suspects are all between 35 and 39 years old. Seven people were previously arrested, but yesterday it was announced that four of them will be prosecuted for theft and receiving stolen goods. They will appear in court for the first time on November 28.
Blenheim Palace is the building where former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill was born. It now serves as a museum. At the time of the theft, an exhibition about the work of the provocative artist Cattelan had just opened. The golden toilet was part of the exhibition and was connected to the sewerage system. Visitors were actually allowed to use it. The work was intended as a satire on excessive wealth and consists of more than 100 kilos of gold with a value of more than 3 million euros.
Little security
At the Guggenheim, the toilet was guarded by a security guard and visitors were allowed to use it for a maximum of three minutes. At Blenheim Palace there was no security guard at the door. Before the start of the exhibition, Edward Spencer-Churchill, who brought the exhibition to the palace, said he did not expect it would ever be stolen. “Firstly, it is connected to the sewerage system and secondly, a would-be thief has no idea what the last person to use the toilet ate,” he told The Times. “So no, I don’t plan on having it guarded.”
Still, the thieves managed to tear the toilet loose. It caused significant water damage to the palace. The first suspect was soon arrested, but the toilet remained missing. It has not been announced whether it has been found, but that seems unlikely. In 2021, police chief Matthew Barber said in an interview with BBC that he thought it was a toilet melted down by the perpetrators.
Provocative
Maurizio Cattelan is known for his provocative works of art. He made, among other things, a wax figure of a kneeling Adolf Hitler who looks like a child from the back. The statue was on display in the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in 2002. He also had a banana duct taped to a wall and called it work Comedian. The banana was eaten by a South Korean student in Seoul earlier this year. No disaster: the banana was replaced every two to three days anyway.
Cattelan’s work is currently on display in two places in the Netherlands. In the Boijmans Van Beuningen depot there is a doll that resembles the artist looking up through a hole in the ground. And in the Voorlinden Museum there are two tiny elevators with doors that open regularly.
View some of the artist’s well-known works here:
ANP
Cattelan’s self-portrait in the Boijmans Van Beuningen
AFP
The small elevator doors that can be seen in the Voorlinden museum, among others
AFP
A sculpture by Cattelan placed in front of the stock exchange building in Milan
ANP
Cattelan’s kneeling Hitler, which was on display in Rotterdam in 2002
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The installation Novecento, seen here in Turin
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The golden toilet of Cattelan
EPA
Cattelan’s banana in Rome
2023-11-07 08:06:50
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