MODERN ART ISN'T SO COMPLEX: IT DEPENDS ON SELF-EVALUATION

Here is what is interesting about Madonna: People don't talk about whether they like her music or don't ... they just talk about her.

Talent-wise, she is negligible. Her appeal comes not from any inborn greatness, but from her repeated assurances that she is something special.

Where she has failed in breaking new musical ground, she has succeeded in making herself a spectacle. As an argument held in reserve, her advocates claim we must, at the very least, respect her acumen for reading and adapting to popular culture.

To this, the appropriate response should be a shrug of shoulders and an insistence on getting along with more important things. Instead, we probably just nod our heads dutifully; it is easier to fall into the trap of hyperbole than argue with people who take such things seriously.

I watched Madonna's movie "Truth or Dare" recently and felt one particular scene sums up my case.

This part of the documentary was filmed before a concert in Toronto where Canadian authorities were threatening to arrest Madonna for violating obscenity laws.

I won't detail the part of her act in question; in a different theater setting, Pee-wee Herman was arrested for something similar.

In a pre-concert prayer with her dancers, Madonna took time in inform the Lord that Toronto was a "fascist" city. She also declared to promoters, wanting her to temper the performance this night, that she would not be bridled.

"I'm an artist," she said, "and this is how I express myself."

With that, she spoke volumes. Freedom of expression is a valid point to raise. Her insistence, however, that this title befits her calls to mind those who "doth protest too much."

Artists, like art, are in the eye of the beholder, and it is obvious that Madonna flatters herself when looking in the mirror.

It may be of some corresponding interest to persons my age that a bit of misguided nostalgia has arisen concerning a new exhibit at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts in New York City.

The exhibit consists of album covers from the alleged "golden age" of that art form. Some 18 of these covers, including Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Brain Salad Surgery" and Traffic's "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys," are featured.

Surprisingly, those wistful about this vanished form of expression do not blame the arrival of compact discs (with their diminished packaging) for its demise.

"Back in the '70s," said the curator of this exhibit, "musicians thought they'd created a piece of art so they wanted a piece of art (on the cover). By 1980, it was basically just people looking to become famous."

These days, video creates the ~im~age. So much for art's endurance. And that's just on the visual side; you don't hear many symphonies dredging up the tunes from "Brain Salad Surgery."

Nor are many museums clamoring after the latest work of Themis Klotz, an "urban sculptor" from Glencoe, Ill.

In this rather posh village, she buried a 1966 station wagon under a mound of sand and gave it a drawn-out name: "The Monument to Humanity No One Will Be Left to Build After George Bush Has His Winnable Nuclear War with 20 Million Americans Acceptable Loss."

The village has a shorter name for it: junk.

What Klotz calls her "peace park," the village calls an "environmental and safety hazard" that violates nine ordinances.

Neighbors say their property values are going to hell. Klotz says her First Amendment rights are under attack.

"That is not an automobile on my front yard," she said. "What was once an auto has become an armature of sculpture."

Given the context of the times, I think Ms. Klotz just doesn't know about art.

If she had only fondled herself before large crowds instead of burying an old car, she would be an artist and bringing home a nice paycheck, too.