Exploring how satire, irony, and anti-art have blurred the lines between high fashion, low culture, and everything in between.
It sounds like the start of a bad joke; what do Balenciaga, Andy Warhol and the Dadaist art movement have in common?… But I’ve never been any good with punchlines, so I’m going to stick to what I know best: telling stories.
This one’s about irony, and how a $650 lunchbox, a can of tomato soup, and a toilet seat all end up saying something eerily similar about culture today.
Chapter 1: Dada and The Original Anti-Art Movement
In French, the word ‘dada’ means “hobby horse”. In Slavic it means “yes, yes”. It’s baby talk in German. If all of this sounds like an absurd name for an art movement is because it is precisely that. It’s childish, random, and vaguely pointless. And this is character number 1 of our story.
You see, up until the early 1910s, art was a complicated web of class, culture, and societal expectations. It was framed (pardon the pun) as something lofty, intellectual, and elite, where museums, academies, critics, and collectors defined what was worthy. Art had rules, hierarchy, and had to mean something.
Dada blew all that apart.
By choosing a name that evoked play, nonsense, and the babble of a child, the movement positioned itself in direct opposition to everything the art world held sacred. It was a declaration of war, during times of war, on meaning, status, and the illusion of artistic superiority. And it did so in Cabaret Voltaire, quite possibly the equivalent of a modern-day potery basement club in the depths of east London. Except this happened in the 1910s, amidst World War I, and in the heart of neutral Zurich, Switzerland.
Known to attract artists, intellectuals, refugees and pacifists, Cabaret Voltaire provoked, intellectualised and challenged. It became the perfect breeding ground for something radically new, where thinkers were shocked by how Western rationalism, science, and nationalism (once seen as signs of progress) had led to the mass destruction of World War I. And so they began to question life along the lines of If logic, order, and reason led to this madness… what’s the point of art, beauty, or truth?
To the dadaists, the very concept of art seemed to be up for grabs. Duchamp famously exhibited his urinal, under the pre-tense that anything could be art if it was re-contextualised. It didn’t need to be beautiful, or represent a complex thought process, but what ultimately mattered was the provocation.
But provocations have a shelf life.
Chapter 2: Andy Warhol and Capitalism
Fast forward a few decades to post-war America, and the art world had already metabolised Dada’s shock tactics. By the 1920s, Dada had morphed into surrealism (a slightly less middle-finger-to-the-establishment movement) and by the time the 1960s rolled around, creatives were setting the brief on fire.
No longer haunted by the immediate shadows of war, 1960s America was balls-deep in consumerism, which is an important backdrop for character number 2, Andy Warhol. This capitalist-driven agenda makes sense: a society that had white-knuckled through Depression-era rations and wartime sacrifices was now overcompensating with a binge on all things disposable and mass-produced. Taking a page from the Dadaists’ playbook of “anything can be art if I say so,” Warhol made the mundane into art and weaponised banality.
Back when Warhol famously painted Campbell’s Soup Cans series in 1962, a can of Campbell’s tomato soup in the U.S. typically cost around 10 to 15 cents. Today, his work sold at Christie’s in 2006 for $11.8 million. Thats is over 94 million times its original price point. Warhol took items from supermarket shelves (Brillo boxes, Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans), and elevated them to museum status while simultaneously dragging the museum down to the supermarket.
It was the mundane as art, art as the mundane.
Chapter 3: Balenciaga’s Norm-Core
Nobody did mundane quite like Moschino’s fresh fragrance, one of the originals when it came to high-end brands deliberately messing with convention. It didn’t get more coded luxury than a cleaning product shaped perfume bottle being sold at 37GBP. But whilst Moschino’s dabble with commercialism paved the way, it is Balenciaga which has consistenly run the show for the past few years.
From selling trash bags to overpriced lunch-boxes, the Spanish high-end label is not new to provocation. What Duchamp did to the art world with a urinal and what Warhol accomplished with soup cans, Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia is doing to fashion with everyday objects transformed through logo placement and eye-watering price tags.
The fashion house’s €1,790 Ikea shopping bag, which is virtually identical to the free paper ones except made of calfskin, is arguably not just a product, but a convoluted type of performance art you can wear. It’s a Warholian remix of class signifiers that forces us to confront our own participation in this elaborate game of status and perception.
Chapter 4: The Conclusion
And so, the three people are in a room and you’re still waiting for a punchline I warned you wouldn’t come.
You won’t get one.
But you will get a few takeaways.
Irony Is the Eternal Currency
From Duchamp to Demna, the ability to repackage the ordinary as extraordinary has proven to be the most durable artistic strategy of the last century.
The Joke Is Always on the Buyer
Whether it’s art collectors dropping millions on Warhol’s grocery items or fashion disciples shelling out thousands for Balenciaga’s lunch boxes, the punchline is written on the receipt. The real art might be the audacity of the transaction itself.
Meaninglessness Is Meaningful
When Dada emerged from the ashes of a world war, its nonsense was a response to the failure of reason. When Warhol elevated soup cans during America’s consumerist boom, he was commenting on mass production. When Balenciaga sells trash bags for $1,790, it’s highlighting our late-stage capitalist absurdity. The emptiness is the point.
Context Is Everything
A urinal is plumbing until it’s in a gallery. A soup can is lunch until it’s on a canvas. A trash bag is garbage until it has a designer label. What separates art from object, luxury from utility, is nothing more than where we place it and what story we tell about it.
The Cycle Never Ends
Each generation thinks they’re being more ironic, more self-aware, more deliberately provocative than the last. But they’re all playing the same game with different props.
So what do Balenciaga, Andy Warhol, and the Dadaist art movement have in common? They’ve all mastered the art of selling emptiness as profundity, turning mundanity into luxury, and convincing us that being in on the joke is worth the price of admission, even when the joke is ultimately on us.
And maybe that’s the best punchline of all.