Let's get the obvious out of the way.
You won't find art in a museum. Not unless it's a century old. What you will find are hysterical tirades, silly gimmicks and sophomoric left-wing rants. This is practically a parody of political art.
This week, in a small rest room about two-thirds of the way up the spiral, the Guggenheim installed the first work of his un-retirement: a celestially glowing, fully functional, eighteen-karat solid-gold toilet. When the work goes public on Friday, a uniformed guard will be standing by the door to answer questions, and also, shall we say, to discourage souvenir takers. A discreet label on the wall outside provides the title, “America.”
Not since Marcel Duchamp submitted a porcelain urinal for exhibition at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists show has a plumbing fixture been so ennobled. That one was never shown—the exhibiting committee decided to hide it behind a screen—but Cattelan’s will remain on view, and in use, for an indefinite period. Decades, maybe, if a donor can be found to buy it. The toilet seat is really heavy to lift, but that shouldn’t deter serious art lovers. Nothing Cattelan has done pre-retirement is more drop-dead beautiful, although his sculpture of Pope John Paul II lying on the floor in full papal regalia, felled by a jagged meteorite, comes close. And, for viewers who crave a one-to-one relationship with art, this piece cannot be topped.
I love the writeup in the New Yorker which pretends that a gag that could have been thought of by a lefty college freshman, and then dismissed for being too tacky and obvious, is a work of art.
The Guggenheim museum website informs us that, "Its participatory nature, in which viewers are invited to make use of the fixture individually and privately, allows for an experience of unprecedented intimacy with a work of art."
In short, it's a golden toilet named America which people are invited to use. I'm sure the Iranians or Cubans would love it. Next maybe there will be artistic flag burnings. The site also tells us that the Guggenheim toilet named America was made possible with support from, among others, Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova is married to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is a pal of Putin.
Others backers include Svetlana Kuzmicheva-Uspenskaya and Alexey Kuzmichev. Svetlana is married to Alexey, a major Russian businessman.
What's this sudden interest by Russian businessmen in funding the display of a golden toilet named America? I'll give you one guess.
While the Guggenheim doesn't get much taxpayer money, it does benefit from assorted government grants like this one. It might be time to ask whether it shouldn't be denied all funding and left to subsist on Putin's generosity.
The irony here, one that hacks and propagandists like Cattelan and the Guggenheim gang are deaf to, is just who actually does use a golden toilet.
The report also claims Mr Putin uses an Ilyushin jet with a £111.3 million cabin that includes a bathroom that has gold fittings and a £50,000 lavatory.
That's not too shabby. The toilet, pictured above, does not appear to be solid gold. Even fifty thousand pounds just buys you gold fittings.