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Maurizio I-will-never-make-another-sculpture Cattelan is at it again. This time he’s attempting to put a final nail into Marcel Duchamp’s defining gesture Fountain. Cattelan’s toilet is made Trump-style in 18-karat gold and called America. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that this title alone would be enough to stop any American sitting down to do business in it, but no such luck. Queue time is often over an hour at the Guggenheim where the work is installed in the fourth floor bathroom.

Images: top to bottom, left to right, America by Maurizo Cattelan, Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, Sherrie Levine Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp), Lady Gaga Armitage shanks, Michael Parekowhai Mimi (currently on exhibition at Te Uru), Robert Gober Three urinals, Untitled by Prague & Kutna Hora, and Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon’s Huh

Driven

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's convention centre in Madison gave us the chance to see what it would be like driving up the ramps of the Guggenheim Museum.

Really? The art world described

“A realm of self-proclaimed royalty full of ‘Black lists’ and ‘Grey lists’ and an astonishing chicanery.’
The judge presiding over the Zwiner/Robins suit

“The most opinionated group of people outside the Vatican.”
Richard Armstrong, Director Guggenheim Museum

“I like that it isn’t regulated”
Gerry Saltz, critic

“Although it reveres the unconventional it is rife with conformity.”
Sarah Thornton in Seven days and nights in the art world

"The art world is now a slave of mass culture. We have a sound-bite culture and so we have sound-bite art."
Matthew Collings, art writer and critic 

“It is the real world in microcosim. The same principles adhere, the same passions and sins, There is good as well as bad, and I have met some delightful people, some scum, and one or two who could be called noble.”
Sophy Burnham in her book The art crowd

“The first rule is you cater to the masses or you kow-tow to the elite; you can’t have both.”
Ben Hecht, film director and writer

“Very conspicuous consumption, very private gratification.”
David Zwirner, art dealer