Maurizio Cattelan Has Installed His Gold Toilet Inside Winston Churchill’s Stately Water Closet at Blenheim Palace

Maurizio Cattelan never got to use his fully functioning gold
toilet at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum. The line for the work,
titled America (2016), was too long, he recently
told the Guardian. But he hopes to have better luck now
that it’s been plumbed in at Blenheim Palace, one of Britain’s most
magnificent stately homes.

Of all of the bathrooms at Blenheim, the Italian artist has
installed his celebrated toilet in Winston Churchill’s own former
water closet. The great war leader was born in the house, which was
built near Oxford by a grateful Queen and country to reward his
ancestor, the First Duke of Marlborough, for his famous victory at
the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.

Fast forward four centuries and the mischievous Italian artist
has now not only installed his toilet, but also Him
(2001), Cattelan’s sculpture of a young Adolf Hitler, under the
Blenheim roof. (Churchill and Hitler never met face to face, adding
to the frisson of the juxtaposition.) It’s all part of the
artist’s barnstorming exhibition “Victory is Not an Option,” which
opened to the public yesterday. It is the latest in an annual
series of high-profile shows organized by the Blenheim Art
Foundation, and Cattelan’s interventions in and around the historic
house are the most subversive so far, by a country mile.

Back in the historic water closet, visitors will have time to
ponder the what ifs of European history had Germany successfully
invaded the British Isles in 1940. There are 20 time slots
available to book per hour, giving visitors roughly twice as long
as the 90 seconds allowed at the Guggenheim.

When the White House asked about possible art loans last year,
the Guggenheim’s senior
curator Nancy Spector dryly suggested the museum
send America. Cattelan said he would have been
honored if Donald Trump had taken up the offer; and he’s accepted
the Blenheim’s invitation for a solo show, his first in Britain,
after Trump was a house guest there a few months later. (The US
President enjoyed a black-tie dinner in the summer of 2018 hosted
by the then British prime minister, a consolation prize for not
getting to visit Buckingham Palace on that trip.)

Cattelan has risen to the occasion by installing his signature
works in the Blenheim’s most splendid spaces, but
putting America in the WC that Churchill once used is
his masterstroke. A dab hand with the paintbrush, and a friend of
artists as well as of the US, Churchill had a robust sense of
humor, after all. He was also proud of his American ancestry,
famously telling a joint meeting of Congress during World War II
that if his father had been American and his mother British,
instead of the other way around, “I might have gotten here on my
own.”

No one who visits Blenheim this fall will be in any doubt that
Cattelan has gone before them. He has laid a gigantic carpet of
union flags across the vast front courtyard. Also
titled Victory Is Not an Option (2019), the
site-specific  work will get worn and torn very soon. Its
frayed edges will, no doubt, be seen by some as an apt metaphor for
Britain in the midst of its Brexit meltdown, which threatens the
very union that the flag symbolizes.

“Victory is Not an Option,” through October 27, 2018,
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. 

The post Maurizio Cattelan Has Installed His Gold Toilet
Inside Winston Churchill’s Stately Water Closet at Blenheim
Palace appeared first on artnet News.