LONDON (AP) — Four men were charged Monday over the theft of an 18-carat gold toilet from Blenheim Palace, the sprawling English country mansion where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born.
I like how the headline mentions the toilet is “satirical” as if they were worried people might think they had a non-ironic 18k solid golden toilet. I’m sure the thieves were only stealing the toilet as a parody of crime.
You know someone somewhere got their feathers ruffled when they heard about a good gold toilet named America
Edit-dang swipe to text. :(
The joke would be to paint it white and reinstall it.
I recognize that toilet! No joke, I pooped in it when it was installed in the NYC Guggenheim (where this article’s photo was taken).
I, too, saw that toilet at the Guggenheim. However, I don’t remember it being available to use—how were you so chosen?
Not sure about the Guggenheim but in London the article says:
The golden toilet was fully functioning, and prior to the theft, visitors to the exhibition could book a three-minute appointment to use it.
how can you know when you’re gonna poop in advance with that amount of precision
When I was there, there was a short line to use it, so after I learned it was a special toilet, I just got in line. I try not to poop in public toilets as a rule, but this seemed like the ideal exception to make.
E: also, it’s a real shame that you weren’t allowed to use it, as use was the primary intention of the artist. I googled it to make sure I wasn’t misremembering…
From the Guggenheim’s website:
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.
I think I must have seen it when there was no line. Nobody expressly told me I couldn’t use it, but it was obviously an exhibit, and I don’t make a habit of taking risky poops in art.
If I had only known…
Marcel Duchamp sends his regards. Gotta make sure he’s the toilet king of the art world.
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt”. In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are “everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.”
