Suhail Malik

 Hans Haacke Condensation Cube , 1963–65 © Generali Foundation / VBK, Wien 2013 Photo: Werner Kaligofs

Hans Haacke
Condensation Cube
1963–65
© Generali Foundation / VBK, Wien 2013
Photo: Werner Kaligofs

One of the fundamental questions of our 21st Century Theory series is whether the “correlationist thinking dominant today may perhaps be an obstacle to understanding important trends in contemporary art.”

 Venus’s Flower Basket  (Euplectella aspergillum)

Venus’s Flower Basket  (Euplectella aspergillum)

Voluminous and heavy, a new anthology brings together 37 texts on speculative realism and its ramifications on the arts by the likes of Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Steven Shaviro, Manuel DeLanda, Diedrich Diederichsen, Reza Negarestani, and many more. Paul Feigelfeld wades through and finds an overly present absolute, and philosophy that has become a tourist attraction.

 Drawing by Dan Perjovich for Spike

Drawing by Dan Perjovich for Spike

Many people are anxious that the growing class divide in the art world and the succession of record-breaking prices paid for contemporary art endanger the belief system supporting it. But why is nobody worried about money itself? Isn’t what happens at an auction that money celebrates its freedom, its release from the burden of being a means of comparison? Is art the new money? On a currency that lives from the bank of the gaze, into which we all make payments.