Cedar Bar depicts the legendary members of the New York School as they may have looked during the heyday of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the late 1940s and 1950s. During that intensely creative postwar period, the Cedar Tavern—a hole-in-the-wall bar located at 24 University Place in New York City—became the preferred gathering spot of this group of artists and beat writers to drink and talk about art and politics deep into the night. The group liked the bar for its cheap booze and absence of tourists. Demolished in 1963, the Cedar Tavern has come down in history as something of a cult locale—an almost mythical place where, reputedly, drunken brawls were as common as stimulating dialogue.