It's hard to explain the perverse pleasure that comes from eating food served from a truck.  Perhaps it appeals to our nomadic origins or maybe it's nothing more than a worthy show of respect to anyone who can make a meal in a van. 

The splendidly orange Mud Truck, seen around Astor Place in New York, began in part as an eccentric challenge to the hegemony of a certain Seattle-based coffee empire that need not be named.  In this case, dissent costs a dollar a cup, and it turns out they make damn good coffee.

Taco trucks on the West Coast have devotees--as well as their dissenters, who call them roach coaches.  The LA-based blog Taco Hunt tacohunt.blogspot.com recommends La Oaxaquena.  The Mission in San Francisco hosts El Tonayense which has enough of a following that they've grown into a small fleet.  The Food Shark, in Marfa, Texas, is a favorite, with enough ambition to offer 'Mediterranean Salads.'   

But the Mud Truck achieved the goal that many mobile restaurants secretly covet: they were offered space in the Kiehl's store on Third Avenue, and now have a home that's more secure than a garage.

--David Coggins

When you're stuck in traffic or wandering the streets of Manhattan, keep your eyes open for manhole covers printed with mysterious conceptual conceits. As part of his retrospective, opening this week at the Whitney, Lawrence Weiner has installed manholes all over town bearing the phrase "In direct line with another & the next."

(IN DIRECT LINE WITH ANOTHER & THE NEXT Lawrence Weiner, 2000. Cast-iron manhole cover , 31 15/16 in. (81.1cm). Public Art Fund project in collaboration with Con Edison and Roman Stone, New York, Courtesy Moved Pictures Archive, New York. Photograph by Kirsten Weiner)

Known for printing words on bridges, buildings and walls of houses, Weiner is unafraid to think large.  Here, he shows a more discreet touch.  In a town where nobody looks up, he's hiding secrets before the eyes, and under the wheels, of the masses.

--David Coggins

James Bond wasn't really much of an environmentalist. He seemed more interested in drinking a bottle of Dom Perignon than recycling it. English artist Chris Gilmore has made a cardboard Aston Martin that any secret agent can appreciate.

Aston Martin is known for its hand-crafted excellence, but this is a new level of individuality. You don't have to be Q to know to keep it away from the carwash.

--David Coggins

If you happen to need a used school bus, you'd be advised to visit Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on the morning of November 3. That's when Clyde Jackson will auction off surplus school buses from the Okaloosa County District, with a few trailers and tractors thrown in for good measure. It's a motley collection of vehicles--many are often bought just for parts and more than a couple come without a key.  It's not uncommon for people to bring their own tow trucks to drag their purchases off the lot.

   
In school you're encouraged to stand behind your work; but what's best for term papers does not necessarily apply to old school buses. In fact, Jackson's terms of sale could not be any more clear: 'As is, where is, with no warranty or guarantee.' That's the spirit.

--David Coggins

With today's pimped out luxury vehicles (flat-screen TVs, voice command systems, etc.), it's easy to forget about the lowly tail light, the modest bit of plastic that, when illuminated, gently reminds the car behind you that you're slowing down--and that they should too. 

Yet designer Stuart Haygarth celebrates precisely that in his chandelier built from cars' rear reflectors.  A highlight of this year's London Design Festival (read more about the event here), it manages to elevate the utilitarian to the level of high concept design.

--David Coggins

In his retrospective, Spiritual America, now on view at the Guggenheim, Richard Prince treats Frank Lloyd Wright's rotunda like the world's largest muscle car garage.  His sculpture, American Prayer, built into a resin base, looks like a high school kid getting his ride ready for the summer cruising season.

American Prayer, 2007 from Richard Prince: Spiritual America, Guggenheim Museum 2007


Spanning work from the past three decades, Prince appropriates images from advertisements and popular culture--he's partial to the Marlboro Man, New Yorker cartoons and fetching nurses from pulp novels.  He also collects hoods from cars that he paints and hangs right on the wall, like vivid minimalist monuments.  Prince doesn't forget the ladies, however, witness the appropriated photograph, Girlfriend, of a biker chick in a leopard print outfit, sitting on a motorcycle like she means business.   

Point Courage, 1989

Untitled (girlfriend), 1993

--David Coggins

The geniuses over at Jalopy Journal's forums have set their minds to figuring out why cars look like they're leaning forward in early 1900s racing photos, as in this famous 1913 photo by Jacques-Henri Lartigue. The discussion plots the technical anomalies that make it happen as well as the accidental effect on pop culture—a million cartoon drawings of cars leaning as they race, all because of the distorting effect of a shutter speed accident.

The intrepid Abby Clawson Low, who runs Hi + Low, discovered this vinyl sculpture of a VW bug by artist Margarita Cabrera. Referencing maquiladoro factories, where a company (say, Volkswagen) sends parts to a Mexican outpost to be assembled and exported, the work is more overtly political than Claes Oldenberg's, but still maintains a similar oversize appeal. This isn't the first time a Beetle has inspired art; Chris Burden, the eminent LA artist, in his 1974 piece Trans-fixed, was nailed to the hood of a Beetle for two minutes while the engine revved.

The Mexican-born Cabrera doesn't go in for anything quite that extreme. She shows at the New York gallery Sarah Meltzer, and currently lives in El Paso. Her other vinyl sculptures include a crumpling Hummer, and a bicycle and piano each meeting their end, like they're melting in the sun.

—David Coggins

The New York artist Duncan Hannah has spent his accomplished career painting rich historical scenes marked with desire. His subjects are often cinematic, ranging from Hitchcock starlet Nova Pilbeam to French gangsters to the finely mustached William Powell. He also has a fondness for literary portraits, English schoolboy life, and the odd bit of erotica.

His new exhibition at J. Graham and Sons, the venerable Madison Avenue gallery, is distinguished by paintings of another recurring passion: classic roadsters. The Wolseley is the subject of The Mystery Road, driving across a stone bridge with what seems like suspicious intention. That should come as no surprise, it's the same car that appears in early Hitchcock thrillers like The Thirty Nine Steps. The boxy black car is anonymous with a touch of menace—it looks like there may be an abducted heroine in the back seat. Hannah is a longtime devotee of mid-century British Grand Prix, when drivers raced around pastoral tracks in Vanwalls and Aston Martins. His portraits of racers show cars speeding by alone—there's a private joy of speed, a liberating sense of motion.

Hannah gets inspiration from old English racing magazines that he's subscribed to since he was a boy. For more immediate inspiration he attends the vintage car race in Lime Rock, near his home in Connecticut. Every Labor Day weekend beautiful cars race along the Housatonic River. 'If a landscape needs a protagonist,' he told me, 'what could be better than a Jaguar XKE?'

—David Coggins

Duncan Hannah's works are on view September 7 – October 9, 2007 at James Graham & Sons

There's a scathing critique of Chrysler's proposed new logo (top) at Tom Spaeth's Identity Works, that we found on Design Observer. "The symbol is a picture of a thing, a metallic orifice of a vaguely threatening nature," Spaeth writes, thoroughly creeping me out.  Then he accuses Chrysler of aligning it's entire identity with the cutesy, retro car design that has become it's only hope: "The wordmark, in a graphic language unrelated to the symbol, feels lifted from a car model nameplate that itself seemed intended to evoke a retro personality, which it now imposes on this 'new' corporation." Let's hope Chrysler takes his review to heart.

--O. Karpinsky