Spike Art Magazine #84 – Vulgarity

For Summer 2025, Spike Art Magazine is getting freaky with the truest image of our time: Vulgarity.

In a moment when moral offense refers less to the ass-scratching of uncultured commoners than the rulelessness of our ruling classes – whether auctioning off public office via shitcoin or bombing all of Gaza’s hospitals – what possibilities are open to art to disclose new aesthetics, new sensations, new truths?

Featuring essays by critic Dean Kissick on AI images as the new folk art and historian Quinn Slobodian on the roots of political shamelessness; definitions of “vulgarity” from Jack Self, Bruce LaBruce, Donna Schons, Cem A., Maxwell Foley, and Daniel Baumann; Alison Gingeras & Alissa Bennettasking “Where Is All the Vulgar Art?”; Artist’s Favorites by political dominatrix Reba Maybury; Francesco Tenaglia taking a whiff of Rob Pruitt’s 1998 installation Cocaine Buffet; Hans-Jürgen Hafner re-situating “Mülheimer Freiheit – Neue wilde Bilder” at Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne, 1985; Alex Hochuli querying “Why Are Politicians So Bad Today?”; a conversation between R.I.P. Germain & Hannah Black; portraits of Hamishi Farah, Christelle Oyiri, and Philipp Timischl by Aodhan Madden, Camille Kingué, and Maximilian Geymüller; Philippa Snow on the Cinema of Transgression’s piss-off nihilism; Biz Sherbert entertaining “What’s Vulgar in Fashion?”; speculation on the bleeding edge of shitcoins by artist-writer-gallerist Jared Madere; Spike editor Isabella Zamboni feeling the obscenity of 90s Benetton billboards all over again; British chef Jago Rackham eating funnel cake at a NASCAR track; Amanda Fortini walking the real Las Vegas; & Tea Hačić-Vlahović on what separates being a hot girl from wanting to fuck one.

About

Founded by the artist Rita Vitorelli in 2004, Spike is a contemporary art magazine aimed at sustaining a vigorous, independent, and meaningful art criticism. At the heart of each issue are feature essays by leading critics and curators on artists making work that plays a significant role in current debates. Situated between art theory and practice and ranging far beyond its editorial base in Vienna and Berlin, Spike is both rigorously academic and stylishly essayistic. Spike’s renowned pool of contributing writers, artists, collectors and gallerists observe and reflect on contemporary art and analyse international developments in contemporary culture, offering its readers both intimacy and immediacy through an unusually open editorial approach that is not afraid of controversy and provocation.