Spike ISSUE 85 (Autumn 2025): Nostalgia

For its Autumn 2025 issue, Spike magazine slices through the haze of cultural déjà vu to ask: Has contemporary art and culture become trapped in retromania? Are we caught in endlessly looping nostalgia cycles, or is the modernist ideal of “making it new” itself the real relic? This issue dissects how the past continues to haunt our cultural present—and what it might take to imagine a better future.

Inside, Jeppe Ugelvig examines the art world’s fetish for nostalgia, while Simon Reynolds and Adina Glickstein discuss exhausting the past. Alex Quicho critiques the “end of newness,” and Martin Herbert profiles kitsch-savant Friedrich Kunath. Features include Johan Grimonprez on identifying with hijackers in dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), Lynn Zelevansky revisiting the iconic New York/New Wave show at P.S.1, and Sean Monahan forecasting our “old-fashioned future.”