The Cedar Tavern has been closed for over a year now, and someday soon New Yorkers will finally get more of what they so desperately need: more condo units priced at $1.7 million and up! The famous tavern on University Place, long associated with the drunken hi-jinks of notables like Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, shut down in December 2006 for “renovations” and never reopened. Promises to come back as part of the nine-story condo have gone unfulfilled; owner Michael Diliberto told The Real Deal:

“Cedar is past. Cedar is history. It means something to me. It doesn't mean something to the next generation." Diliberto and his late older brother Joe initially envisioned condos on top of the Cedar Tavern, but plans to reopen the pub were abandoned when Joe was diagnosed with fatal cancer and died two months ago. The bar closed shortly afterwards, on the day after Thanksgiving 2006.

Opening this past weekend and running through June 30th is Seattle artist Mike Leavitt's "New York Art Army" show. Hand-made action figures were created to visually tell the history of the city's creative scene, the wooden New Yorkers stand alongside other "urban art stars and old masters." Fittingly, the show (exhibited in a site-specific installation) is across the street from the ToyTokyo toy shop, at their Showroom. more ›

The Cedar Tavern is next in the long list of establishments giving way to condo development. The tavern has been located at 82 University Place (between 11th and 12th Streets) since 1963, though it's original location, in 1866, was on Cedar Street, from there it moved to 24 University Place. more ›

While you’re touring New York’s Beat Generation landmarks, drop by the Grey Art Gallery to find out what the “community of disaffiliates” were doing out in San Francisco. You’ll discover through Semina Culture that they were hanging out with Wallace Berman. more ›

We'd been eyeing the huge book, New Art City, which is about American artists hitting their stride in the mid-20th century New York City. However, we were concerned that at 665 pages, we would throw out our back carrying it back home from the store (or cause UPS to slip a disc) and then it would break out coffee table. John Updike reviewed it this weekend in the NY Times Book Review, and he assuaged our fears: "This is not a coffee-table art book; its illustrations, though numerous, are small, and black-and-white. A dense text rules the textbook-sized pages - 557 of them, not counting notes, acknowledgments and index." The book looks at the famous - Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Donald Judd - and the lesser known - Hans Hofmann, Joan Mitchell, Fairfield Porter, and John Graham. Author Jed Perl will be speaking at a few events here, so it should be interesting if you're at all interested in modern American art. more ›

One reason I like press releases from the Martinez Gallery is their use of flowery prose: "The primary examples of this bloodline of real, authentic Bombers are Ghost, in the 80s, VFR, since �88, JA, since �90, and Giz, since �93. Not one of them kowtows before the idols of (1) legality, which of course changes with time; (2) Muralism, practiced so majestically by the Mexicans in the wake of their 20th century revolution (Orozco, Rivera, Siquieros) and from which Jackson Pollock, among many others, learned so much; nor (3) the �Fine Arts,� which are the exact opposite of the kind of work seen, for example, in the extraordinary Thomas de Quincey, that opium-eating murderer of art and life; and of course (4) the piecing, or assembly-line repetition that feeds the hungry maw of the market; not to mention even remoter influences, each with their appellation d�origin. Before this conceptual swindle, which won�t even admit to its own name, only the Bombers propose to do battle, counter current. Only the Bombers dare to look across the river of lies that so many pay tribute to, that so many permit by averting their eyes -- those mute masses that know nothing of true graffiti and even less of its spirit, philosophy and world vision." - opening: feb 22 2002, 8 PM after party: 10 PM. more ›