The exhibition and an accompanying catalog edited by Mr. Holzer don’t tell us anything radically new about Lincoln. Its picture of Lincoln is our picture of Lincoln—morally upright, politically shrewd, anguished over the war’s toll. The 16th president is never that far away, either from history museums or even the public’s thoughts. Lincoln is one of two communal touchstones binding our turbulent democratic society together. The other being TV, God bless it.

This year, Lincoln’s bicentennial, has shined an especially pious light on the Lincoln legend. Headed into the late months, you could be forgiven for a bit of Lincoln fatigue.

And perhaps this exhibition needs a little forgiveness for the awkward historical conjunction that provides its premise: Lincoln visited New York only five times during his life, and only once during his presidency. (Events kept him elsewhere.) But this is the New-York Historical Society, after all, and perhaps one of the great reasons to see this exhibit is the unstinting portrait of New York’s wickedness in the 1860s.

Even then the promise of New York was that here rustic talent grew best, and nowhere else.

When Lincoln arrived in New York in Feb. 27, 1860, to deliver an hour-and-a-half-long speech on the issue of the Constitution and slavery to a sellout crowd of 1,500 at Cooper Union, he was the favorite son of western Republicans (back when the West meant Illinois and Indiana). But he hadn’t won an election in more than a decade and his record in office consisted of a single, mostly undistinguished term in Congress.

Two months after the Cooper Union Speech, which ends in a double-barrel blast of “Let us have faith that right makes might,” Lincoln had won the Republican nomination for president. An overnight success, to borrow some showbiz jargon.

We made Lincoln look like a winner the way the folks back home in Springfield never could. One of the fascinating subplots of “Lincoln and New York” is that New Yorkers were wise in the ways of media and the power of pictures way before it was wise about anything else.

The morning of his Cooper Union speech, Lincoln stopped by photographer Mathew Brady’s studio for a photo portrait. Brady asked Lincoln to yank up his collar, so as to appear less scrawny for a potential national audience that had no idea what he looked like.

The image of a suited and stately Lincoln polished the prairie rail-splitter’s image. (The photo is included in the show, along with the actual lectern used in the shoot.) Lincoln reportedly said, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me president.”

You may be gratified to think that in the crucial hour of our nation’s history, this sometimes unimaginably superficial city “made” one of our most astounding statesmen.

New York was in fact a bastion of pro-slavery opinion, trailing upstate New York in progressive politics. “Lincoln and New York” includes a gallery detailing the screaming headlines, partisan rags and editorial kingmakers of the era’s press: some 174 daily and weekly newspapers in 1860. Lincoln’s famous letter to the editor addressed to Horace Greeley, the Quixote behind the pro-Union New York Tribune, is included. That, and the editorials, satire and political cartoons that ran in anti-Lincoln, pro-slavery papers like The World and The New-York Daily News.

They still carry a shock—of what? Recognition, maybe, of the directions democratic discourse often takes.

Hard as it is to imagine of our present-day city, which prides itself on its (mostly) liberal political convictions, but Cooper Union speech aside, Lincoln was deeply unpopular in New York. He lost the city in 1860 by about 25,000 votes. He also lost Brooklyn and Westchester. In 1864, facing a collation of antiwar Democrats, called Copperheads, and an Irish immigrant bloc enraged at the possibility of competing against African-Americans for jobs, he lost again. “Lincoln and New York” takes us out of the cosmopolitanism of the Bloomberg II era and reminds us of a time that was probably far worse than the cauldron of Tammany sachem and the Five Points slum combined.

Along the way, the exhibition hits a couple of blind spots of local historical knowledge. Like Fernando Wood. Don’t recognize the name? In an era of scandals big and small, but mostly big, Wood is my candidate for chief scoundrel: the mayor who, at the start of the Civil War, proposed the city ditch the Union and declare itself open to Southern trade. Read it; believe it.

The picture becomes clearer, and more complicated, with every step.New York State sent more men and suffered more casualties as a state than any other in the Union. And here the Draft Riots of July 1863 left more than 140 dead, mostly African-Americans, in the worst racial violence in American history.

With his assassination, Lincoln became an overnight sensation in New York.

On April 17, three days after the assassination, more than 150,000 people turned out on Broadway to pass Lincoln lying in state at City Hall. Profound mourning did not get in the way of the hustle: Lincoln pictures, Lincoln plates, Lincoln ribbons, Lincoln lockets, every piece of penny crapola big enough to fit the martyred president’s image.

Is it worth reflecting on at a time when, after nearly a decade-long turn as America’s City, New York, or at least Wall Street, is again nationally reviled? Some semi-corrupt strand wound deep in our cultural DNA? Beats me.

Either way, this exhibition reminds one of New York’s greatest traits: The city will not be shamed.

editorial@observer.com

“I’m sworn to secrecy,” Rupert Murdoch told The Observer as he was leaving the New-York Historical Society’s auditorium last night. But: “We’re making progress,” the News Corp. chief added.

Mr. Murdoch hosted the 9^th annual presentation of the Eric Breindel awards for opinion writing alongside Fox News boss Roger Ailes and Newsweek senior editor Lally Weymouth.

Ms. Weymouth glowingly introduced Mayor Bloomberg.

“Everybody in New York that I know thinks he’s a brilliant mayor,” she said. “And everyone thinks he would be a brilliant president.”

“Nine years ago, who would have thought this would be one of the most prestigious awards in journalism?” Mayor Bloomberg said. “But, then again, nine years ago, who would have guessed the hottest thing on television would be a national talent show called American Idol. Or that the highest-rated news program would be one calling itself a 'No Spin Zone.' Or the most popular site on the Internet would be an interactive photo album called MySpace.”

“What will Mr. Murdoch think of next?” he asked. “I guess you’ll just have to ask the Bancroft family.”

But the Mayor had to cut things short.

“I would love to stay with you, but to show you how diverse this city really is,” the Mayor said, “I am going from a place where [News Corp.'s] Martin Singerman invited me, to a place-- to give another speech--where Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has [invited me].”

Mr. Ailes played the part of M.C. and presented this year's awards two writers: Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and John Wilson, a recent graduate of Claremont McKenna College. Mr. Boot takes home a $20,000 prize, while Mr. Wilson—a young journalist—receives a $10,000 check and internship with the New York Post’s editorial page.

“We’ve become increasingly successful, and yet we’ve been increasingly criticized," he said to the crowd about his company. "Sometimes for being too pro-American. Sometimes we’re too pro-Israel. Sometimes too pro-democracy.

"I’ve been quoted as saying, ‘This is a great country.’ A lot of people are trying to get in, nobody’s trying to get out. The press is an essential pillar of that democracy. The press didn’t invent democracy. Democracy invented freedom of the press. So we will investigate anything and find the truth, and report it, but we do not get up every morning, assuming that our country is guilty. We just happen to like democracy."

And he had some choice words for Democratic candidates who have decided not to debate on Fox.

“The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda,” said Mr. Ailes. “And that’s what’s coming.”

That was followed by applause from the crowd which featured several News Corp. executives and journalists from Murdoch-owned papers—Richard Johnson, the Post’s Page Six editor, for one.

And there were other notable figures who knew Mr. Breindel, an accomplished journalist, who died in 1998.

“While he and I didn’t always agree on editorial policy, he was a consummate gentleman,” Former Mayor David Dinkins told The Observer, during the cocktail hour.

”He was a fine man,” continued Mr. Dinkins, “and I’m sorry he left us so early.”

See after the jump for "it."

- Max Abelson

Gotbaum's work rate may or may not have slackened since she served as president of the New-York Historical Society. Maybe it's like comparing apples and oranges.

So none of this is intended to pick on her, but just as a constructive exercise...

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how she (or her successor) might make more productive use of the office?

--Jason Horowitz

Or, one should say, a good part of the trick. While Ms. Mansdorf's gifts are undeniable, her attempts at narrative painting are less so. Her disaffected couples and families put out of their homes by fire are stunted in that their staging underscores artifice rather than cultivates fiction. Ms. Mansdorf is at her best when sticking to the plain-as-day particulars of her craft. We aren't drawn to her six-packs, toy guns and nude model in the stairwell for their dramaturgy. We go to them because they are pictures we can believe in.

Having said that, the glimpse Ms. Mansdorf proffers of a woman cutting a man's hair hints at an intimacy that is becoming and true. In the meantime, she might want to reacquaint herself with the old saw about the art that conceals art and see where it leads her. To good places, I'll bet. Eve Mansdorf: Recent Paintings is at First Street Gallery, 526 West 26th Street, Suite 915, until April 13.

Union Boss' Cityscapes

The self-taught artist Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997), whose work is currently the subject of the exhibition Ralph Fasanella's America at the New-York Historical Society, painted what he knew best: the working-class neighborhoods of New York City. His depictions of family, street fairs, stickball and Harry & Bud's Service Station-the business of which he was co-owner-dote on detail while reveling in the larger urban panorama. As might be expected of a former trade-union organizer and onetime member of the Young Communist League, Fasanella often touched on politics in his work: Joseph McCarthy, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and the assassination of J.F.K. figure prominently in the pictures. As is expected of a folk artist, the paintings are unadulterated by pretension, heartfelt and pure.

The most charming of Fasanella's paintings, like the encomiums to sandlot baseball and home sweet home, keep it simple and bucolic. The beneficent sun in Main Street-Dobbs Ferry (1985) should shine on us all. Yet the majority of Fasanella's pictures do less with more. For all of its specificity, the work is pretty generic. The major exception is Farewell, Comrade-The End of the Cold War (1992-97), a picture that puts Communism to rest more with regret than good riddance. As art, Farewell, Comrade is cluttered but fascinating. As evidence of a true believer's confusion when faced with the brute fact of history, it is arresting, terrifying and sad. That's why it's the strongest thing here. Ralph Fasanella's America is at the New-York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street, until July 14.

Dear Jack: Lose the Gimmick

Like a lot of young artists, Jack Featherly, whose recent abstract paintings are on view at Team Gallery, has talent, an "eye" and the irritating inability to take his work seriously. Of course, this latter tendency could just as well be a savvy marketing strategy-sincerity and gravitas being the last things likely to propel one into the front ranks of the contemporary scene. And Mr. Featherly's clever post-mortems on abstract painting are nothing if not with it. Picture Clyfford Still and Cy Twombly funneled through the Pop aesthetic, peppered with postmodernist affectation, and given a sheen so hard and shiny one could ice-skate upon it, and you'll have an idea of how this artist transmutes a great tradition into a trivial pursuit.

What's dispiriting about Mr. Featherly is that he's clearly capable of better things. The friction he generates between stenciled calligraphy and the fluffy forms that engulf it catch the eye. I'd even go so far as to call Psychobuildings (2002) a good picture. Yet the habit of conspicuously signing each canvas in a different font is the giveaway-as if we didn't already know that Mr. Featherly's main priority in life is to prove himself way beyond cool. We get it, Jack, we get it. Now shut up and paint. Jack Featherly is at Team Gallery, 527 West 26th Street, until April 20.

This is a point worth bearing in mind for anyone who goes to see the work of the American painter John Koch (1909-1978), which is currently on view at the New-York Historical Society. Realism of a certain type–an avowedly anecdotal Realism that specialized in the genteel narcissism and snobbery of what used to be called "Upper Bohemia"–was Koch's forte. He was hugely adept at mastering the technical means appropriate to his fictional subject (which was mainly focused on the social pastimes staged in the artist's lavish Central Park West apartment and studio for pictorial purposes), with its glittering cast of friends and artist's models and the tasteful props that were still associated with upper-class money and privilege in mid-20th-century America.

The result is painting that is often very entertaining, but in the way that certain Broadway shows used to be entertaining–which is to say, diverting, shallow and instantly forgettable. Or, to put the matter another way, this is painting that can be amusing in the way that other people's fantasies about themselves can sometimes be amusing–until, that is, you come to understand that they actually believe in the fantasies they have invented for themselves.

Don't be concerned, by the way, if John Koch's work, or even indeed his name, is unknown to you. Outside a certain circle of reactionary artists and their patrons, Koch was ignored in his lifetime and remains more or less unknown today. He prided himself on being at odds with the art fashions of his time–whether or not the art itself was great, indifferent or somewhere in between–and the museums that specialize in trendy developments in art returned the compliment by refusing to show his work. He wasn't a needy case, however. He enjoyed a loyal and lucrative following among a segment of well-heeled, well-connected people who were similarly disinclined to find any merit in the innovations of 20th-century painting and believed themselves to be upholding "tradition," whereas in fact they were only indulging their own incomprehension.

For collectors of this persuasion, Koch served as a kind of court painter, producing flattering family portraits and other inducements to self-esteem while at the same time producing for himself and his non-portrait clients pictorial celebrations of what passed for la vie de la bohème among the haute bourgeoisie. Many of these celebratory paintings of the artist's life are themselves group portraits–or pseudo-portraits–in which the artist himself is prominently represented along with his handsomely dressed wife and a sufficiency of naked models, male and female, to lend a note of erotic suggestion to the otherwise very genteel mise en scène .

Koch made a point of insisting that the attention he lavished on naked flesh in his paintings had nothing to do with an erotic intention, but his paintings suggest that he protested rather too much on this score. He was clearly fixated on beautiful physiques as sexual objects, and he was extremely shrewd in judging exactly how far he could go–if I may paraphrase Jean Cocteau–in going too far, especially in his pictures of young, naked, handsome couples in their well-appointed bedrooms and baths. Frankly, I think these are some of the best paintings in his entire oeuvre , for Koch tended to lose interest in his beautiful people when they were fully clothed. They became mere mannequins when his sexual interest was in abeyance. Even worse are the really dead landscapes that are devoid of figures.

Except for the sexual interest in his naked models, Koch's talents were most vividly engaged when he was painting expensive objects–old carpets and antique furniture, china and glassware, bedding and drapery, and the cornices and moldings in the beautiful rooms that are the settings of so many of the paintings. As I made my way through the exhibition at the New-York Historical Society a number of times the other day, I found my attention more and more drawn to these details rather than to the paintings as artistic wholes. And this, in turn, reminded me of a passage in one of Henry James' essays, when he was writing about the Paris art scene in the 1870's.

The painting under discussion– Friedland , by the French academician Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier–is of a military subject in the Napoleonic period. James clearly found it hilariously awful, and this, in part, is what he wrote: "It seems to me it is a thing of parts rather than an interesting whole …. The best thing, say, is a certain cuirassier, and in the cuirassier the best thing is his clothes, and in his clothes the best thing is his leather straps, and in his leather straps the best thing is the buckles. This is the kind of work you find yourself performing over the picture; you may go on indefinitely. That great general impression which, first and foremost, it is the duty of an excellent picture to give you, seems to me to be wanting here …. "

The difference, James added, is "like the difference to the eye between plate glass and gushing water." There isn't much "gushing water"–which is to say, painterly vitality and invention–in the paintings of John Koch, but there is an abundance of the pictorial equivalent of plate glass.

Needless to say, this isn't everyone's view of the current exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. My friend and colleague here at The New York Observer , Michael M. Thomas, is in radical disagreement with this adverse assessment, and he's played an important role in bringing the current show, which is called John Koch: Painting a New York Life , to the New-York Historical Society. He has also written a spirited essay for the exhibition's catalog. Unlike myself, he has the advantage of having been a friend of Koch and a participant in the social life that is so graphically illustrated in the artist's pictures. If you want to sample the kind of nostalgia for old times which Koch's pictures continue to elicit even now, when so much else in New York life has changed almost beyond recall, Michael's essay is the thing to read. For myself, I never regarded black-tie openings at the museums or an over-consumption of martini cocktails at fashionable parties as the summit of human happiness, and so my view of the past that is so lovingly evoked in Michael's essay is somewhat different.

Still, it is one of the functions of the New-York Historical Society to remind us of our past, and in this sense it is altogether appropriate for an exhibition like John Koch: Painting a New York Life to be mounted at this particular institution, where artistic distinctions are not the first order of business. Social fantasy is as much a part of history as artistic achievement, and in this exhibition it has certainly been given its due. As a painting exhibition, however, it remains–for some of us, anyway–a paltry experience.

John Koch: Painting a New York Life remains on view at the New-York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street at Central Park West, through Jan. 27.