Mopeds Roar Back
By Matt Frassica
The moped (short for motor pedal) was going to be the vehicle of the future - back in the 1970s. Then gas prices fell and U.S. drivers went back to buying cars and big motorcycles. Now, urban moped enthusiasts are reviving the bikes and bike culture. The End of the Dial went to the Orphanage, New York City's only moped shop, to learn about this transportation marvel.
Looking for the Empty City
By Matt Frassica
Lynn Saville's photographs of the city at night are eerily empty. Saville let our reporter tag along on a nighttime walk in Central Park to get a shot of Bethesda Terrace. But even at night the park is a busy place, and a photographer with a tripod attracts attention.
Outsourcing
David Hockney's iPhone Passion
By Lawrence Weschler
The New York Review of Books has a great audio slideshow up now - narrated by Lawrence Weschler - about the painter David Hockney's late-career iPhone obsession.
In the accompanying article, Weschler writes:
"After two decades of regularly finding himself caught up in all sorts of seemingly extraneous side-passions (photocollages, operatic stage design, fax extravaganzas, homemade photocopier print runs, a controversial revisionist art-historical investigation, and a watercolor idyll), David Hockney, now age seventy-two, has finally taken to painting once again, doing so, over the past three or four years, with a vividness and a sheer productivity perhaps never before seen in his career.
[...] The buildup toward these shows has found Hockney busier than ever (he is still in the process of completing a dozen fresh canvases as I write), but not so busy that he hasn't managed to become fascinated by yet another new (and virtually diametrically opposite) technology, one that he is pursuing with almost as much verve and fascination: drawing on his iPhone."
In the accompanying article, Weschler writes:
"After two decades of regularly finding himself caught up in all sorts of seemingly extraneous side-passions (photocollages, operatic stage design, fax extravaganzas, homemade photocopier print runs, a controversial revisionist art-historical investigation, and a watercolor idyll), David Hockney, now age seventy-two, has finally taken to painting once again, doing so, over the past three or four years, with a vividness and a sheer productivity perhaps never before seen in his career.
[...] The buildup toward these shows has found Hockney busier than ever (he is still in the process of completing a dozen fresh canvases as I write), but not so busy that he hasn't managed to become fascinated by yet another new (and virtually diametrically opposite) technology, one that he is pursuing with almost as much verve and fascination: drawing on his iPhone."
No Trips to Disney World for Some Comic Fans
By Phillip Molnar
After the $4 billion purchase of Marvel Comics by Disney Entertainment in late August, many comic fans were still in a state of shock a week after. Although a few fans outside St. Mark's Comics in the East Village, Manhattan were not concerned, most were worried sick.
Pump Up the Volume
By Matt Frassica
You might have seen Tauba Auerbach's extreme close-ups of folded paper in the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus triennial last spring. Her current show at Deitch Projects includes a couple of those, as well as paintings of folded canvas and photos of TV static. What's new is the custom-built pump organ in the middle of the room. Auerbach and collaborator Cameron Mesirow make daily appearances to perform a duet that chimes with the themes of the show.