Music

Patrick Bateman, Pop Critic
by Rob Horning
Still from  American Psycho, 2000 Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman with Huey Lewis and The New's album Fore!  

"Patrick Bateman doesn’t get much credit as a music critic. Maybe that’s because he is a fictional character in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho, which prominently features his detailed accounts of murdering people. But amid the chapters about facial regimens, returning videotapes, and dismembering prostitutes are three revealing essays on the careers of some of the biggest 1980s adult contemporary stars..."

 

– This text appears in Spike Art Quarterly #57. You can buy it in our online shop –

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Fire , 2021, Oil on canvas, 177 x 213 cm All images courtesy White Cube

Fire, 2021, Oil on canvas, 177 x 213 cm

All images courtesy White Cube

The Comfort of Strangers

Margaux Williamson at White Cube, London

Discourse
Nyan Cat (2011)

Nyan Cat (2011)

The Downward Spiral: Popular Things

You can run but you can’t hide. Dean Kissick on NFTs and the pervasiveness of mundane art.

Things we like
Readellion co-founders Mariia Diakova and George Vyhranovskyi

Readellion co-founders Mariia Diakova and George Vyhranovskyi

Readellion, Ukraine’s first magazine shop

They’re the front line workers of the art world, or something. In Spike’s new series, Shoptalk, we call book and magazine stores and publishers from around the world to see what they’re reading, thinking, stocking, and plotting. First up is Mariia Diakova and George Vyhranovskyi of Readellion, who play fairy-godparents to Kyiv’s budding art scene. 

People
View from outside

View from outside

Re-appropriating the Colony

From the Archives: an interview with artist Kader Attia about La Colonie in Paris

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#66
Left: Vue du torrent du Valentin dans le parc des Buttes Chaumont au sud , 2020 Acrylic on canvas, 197 x 138 cm Right: Capriccio à Paris , 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 250 cm

Left: Vue du torrent du Valentin dans le parc des Buttes Chaumont au sud, 2020 Acrylic on canvas, 197 x 138 cm

Right: Capriccio à Paris, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 250 cm

Still Life

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy at Museum Frieder Burda – Salon Berlin

News

Announcing our new Contributing Editors

Beginning with Issue #67, The Sports Issue, which will be out in early April, Spike is delighted to announce our new contributing editors... Our MVPs, if you will. 

Discourse
#66
Jenny Holzer, Truisms: All things are delicately interconnected, 1977–79 Electronic sign, Installation view Dupont Circle, Washington, DC, 1986. Photo © 1986 Jenny Holzer, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Jenny Holzer, Truisms: All things are delicately interconnected, 1977–79 Electronic sign, Installation view Dupont Circle, Washington, DC, 1986. Photo © 1986 Jenny Holzer, Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Essay: New Localism

The endless circuit of global fairs, exhibitions, and biennials once kept the art world perpetually in motion, but Corona has put a stop to all of this, blocking the easy paths to jetsetting. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Or can we find solace and community in our own backyards, with only glimpses of goings-on abroad from our overly Zoom’ed sofas? By JEPPE UGELVIG

People
Leilah Weinraub, photo © Quentin Belt

Filmmaker, artist, and former CEO of Hood By Air Leilah Weinraub; all photos © Quentin Belt

Death Notice for After Party

With heavy hearts, Spike and Jordan Richman announce the death of the art world's dearly beloved After Party. 

Discourse
Shoveler Duck from Birds of America (1827) by John James Audubon, etched by William Home Lizars

Shoveler Duck from Birds of America (1827) by John James Audubon, etched by William Home Lizars

The Downward Spiral: Animals

For his first column of the new year, Dean Kissick finds solace and good omens in ornithology. The future looks not altogether unpromising.

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Emanuel Layr, Henrikke Nielsen, Sophie Tappeiner; Photo by Katharina Gossow

Emanuel Layr, Henrikke Nielsen, Sophie Tappeiner; Photo by Katharina Gossow

INTERCONTI WIEN: A Boutique Art Fair opens in Vienna

With the country still in lockdown, three Vienna galleries – Emanuel Layr, Croy Nielsen, and Sophie Tappeiner – came up with a new format for an art fair set in the conference halls of a popular hotel in the Austrian capital.

Things we like

Surface Noise

BOTTEGA VENETA has found a means to offer a runway show in a bag, complete with photobooks, and a soundtrack on green vinyl.

"The 80s was the last period when low self-esteem was a normative response to authority"

Essay: The Last Great Era of Low Self-Esteem