Louse Bonnet, “Reversal of Fortune” at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
An Open Letter to the DAAD

An author, artist, and Spike columnist rejects a prestigious German fellowship in response to the widespread cancellation of those protesting the genocide in Gaza.

“Horror Patriae”: steirischer herbst 2024

Opening to the Austrian far right’s national election victory, the Graz art festival’s many folk grotesqueries distill the brokenness of social modernity.

Jana Euler at WIELS

In Brussels, a party-like retrospective finds the network painter trying to show her medium becoming “painting” in wordplay, hyperbole, and visual gags.

Vaginal Davis at Moderna Museet

Across six Stockholm institutions, an exhibition of tongue-in-cheek “terrorist drag” is vast, charmingly megalomaniacal, and spectacularly queer.

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An image for the showcase module titled, "Spike #80 – The State of the Arts"
Spike #80 – The State of the Arts

This issue is point of reference so that the next time we go off road, we can find a way back to our last clear perspective – a bit jaded, a little dizzy, but faithful as ever that artists are finding our way forward.

With Travis Diehl on riskless art; Domenick Ammirati on getting ahead by getting hot; Anna Kornbluh on culture as pure vibe; an interview with O’Flaherty’s Jamian Juliano-Villani; Aodhan Madden on Maggie Lee, Ser Serpas & K8 Hardy; Jaakko Pallasvuo and Kristian Vistrup Madsen talk dropping out of the art world; a primer on decentralized social media; Elham Dawsari’s postcard from Riyadh; Nicolas Bourriaud on this year’s Venice Biennale; and so much more.

On Personal Style
By Joanna Walsh

If the personal is ultimately political, and fashion sways between self-expression and sameness, what does it really mean to have “personal style”?

Terry Atkinson Is Fed up with Looking
By Sam Lewitt

The Art & Language founder on the tyranny of the visual, uncontrollable grease, and the time he was nearly beaten up for his wordsmithery.

Going Out In Cologne 2024
By Dennis W. Hochköppeler and Jakob Pürling

Looking for a cold Kölsch at the world’s oldest art fair? The founders of gallery Drei commend Cologne’s best potato pancakes and techno digs; plus: French Toast à la Martin Kippenberger.

An Ungrateful Guest
By Travis Diehl

Art tries to broaden your mind; food actually does. Travis Diehl’s new monthly column, “Libra Season,” chronicles the art world of the overwrought 2020s, starting with a salad.

Against Autofiction: Two Paths for the Internet Novel
By Conor Truax

The digital era is synonymous with flat, persona-driven fiction. How can literature transcend celebrified Tweets and respond innovatively to the web’s decentered form?

The Six Spikiest Movies of New York Film Festival
By Nolan Kelly

US premieres from Luca Guadagnino, Sean Baker, David Cronenberg, and others set into motion the unreliability of images and the politics of place and placelessness.

Virginie Despentes Is Writing a Better Way to Live
By Katie Tobin

The author of the epistolary novel Dear Dickhead on redemption, porn censorship, and why straight guys just can’t seem to talk about sex.

On Trophies
By Joanna Walsh

When does a fashion item become a trophy? If luxury is just aspirational consumption, then nobody can claim the prize.

Going Out In Paris
By Robbie Fitzpatrick

A corner of paradise on earth, sure – but what’s for lunch? The founder of Fitzpatrick Gallery waves adieu to his outpost in the Marais with a menu of pastry, bentō, and natural wine.

Do You Have to Be Hot to Get Ahead?
By Domenick Ammirati

If contemporary art had once come to believe it was the genre to subsume all others, it has since been outflanked by the art of just being – which is, ultimately, the art of being hot.

Learning at the Knee of Sigmar Polke
By Nina Pohl

The director of Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, revisits a childhood of higher beings and the painting that crowned the German contemporary art’s chief ironist.

Lily McMenamy at Cafe Theater Schalotte, Berlin
By Philipp Hindahl

In her latest theatrical work, the proudly histrionic Lily McMenamy scrambles all the idiosyncrasies that make up the performance of the self.

Wayne Koestenbaum Digresses
By Thomas (T.) Lax

The poet, critic, and factotum artist texts with MoMA’s performance curator about the slap-slap of montage in his new short films.

Philosophy of Nature 4.0
By Armen Avanessian and Daniel Falb

As climate change spawns rich-guy fantasies of colonizing space, a co-author of Thinking Planets excerpts a theory on Earth’s own potential in conversation with Spike.

The Erotic Pity of Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer”
By Nolan Kelly

A French auteur notorious for reenacting patriarchal sex fantasies flips the script post #MeToo by casting an older woman in the role of predator.

On Newness
By Joanna Walsh

Are we feeling nostalgia yet for nostalgia? Autumn’s fashion obsession with novelty may just veil our comfort fix.

Cory Arcangel Thinks Michel Majerus Was a Space Invader
By Patrick Kurth

A puckish computer artist decodes salvaging the late painter’s last laptop and his long journey from hating its owner into awe.

Javier Peres Holds a Mirror up to the Times
By Ana Finel Honigman

The founder of Peres Projects weighs in on why artists still love Berlin and cherishing art history’s one-hit wonders.

Going Out In Vienna 2024
By Victoria Dejaco

Is there more to Austria’s capital than hot sausages and chocolate cake? A precocious gallerist passes the menu on where to eat a vegetable during the city’s art festivities.

Jana Euler at WIELS
By Emile Rubino

In Brussels, a party-like retrospective finds the network painter trying to show her medium becoming “painting” in wordplay, hyperbole, and visual gags.

Three-Sided Football at Casa Museo Asger Jorn
By Daniele Panucci

A joint residency by David Adamo, Giacomo Porfiri, and Wolfgang Staehle poetically revivified the home Jorn called “a machine of human and universal expression.”

Contemporary Art’s Twin Follies
By Mike Pepi

Gripped by a crisis of purpose, institutions that once formed culture’s vanguard are redecorating the past in two genres of nostalgia. Is there a way out?

Simone Fattal at Secession
By Max Henry

Cast in clay, collage, and lyrical fragments, a constellation of gracefully raw works in Vienna beckon into the artist’s world of fables.

On Fakes
By Joanna Walsh

What are we looking for in authenticity if faking is our contemporary condition? In a hyperreality without originals, nobody knows your Birkin is a fake.