Spending a penny just got much more expensive thanks to the unveiling of an 18-karat solid gold toilet. The unusual throne is a work of art by Maurizio Cattelan, but the Italian has taken the unusual step of allowing viewers not only to witness the bowl – but also try it out for themselves. The Guggenheim museum in New York is inviting visitors to the toilet entitled ‘America’, replacing a toilet in one of the museum’s public bathrooms on the fifth floor with a fully functional replica cast in solid gold. Cattelan is often described as the art world’s resident prankster and provocateur. The new work makes available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the wealthy one percent. 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 an artwork. Cattelan’s toilet offers a wink to the excesses of the art market, and recalls Marcel Duchamp’s famous work, ‘Fountain’, a 1917 sculpture of a urinal. The artist also references Donald Trump with the artwork, adding that the Trump connection – bringing in the gilded excess of Trump’s real-estate ventures and private residences – is “another layer, but it shouldn’t be the only one”.