Contemporary art always has felt to me like an “the emperor has no clothes” enterprise. It’s appreciated and valued because this marks you as not part of some out-group.
Almost all artifacts carry some amount of group membership signal. I think the more interesting question is whether an artifact carries anything in addition to that signal. And, while I agree that a lot of contemporary art leans way to heavily towards in-group signaling, I think it would be unfair to dismiss it entirely.
