It is misleading to discuss the enlightened use of public spaces as a "sculpture" problem. The issue is how to enhance our enjoyment of public spaces gracefully. One of my favorite public spaces is the courtyard of Louisiana Museum north of Copenhagen. It is a delightful cluster of Calder stabiles/mobiles overlooking the Oresund between Denmark and Sweden. Half the kick is that it is a kind of permanent visual dessert for the museum's dining terrace. Parks full of trees planted by thoughtful individuals for a specific memorial purpose are equally commendable.In my hometown Philadelphia the retrieval of slum brownfields on behalf of community vegetable gardens beats Richard Serra's steel gymnastics every time. Modernism's by´now longstanding farce of a failure to equate quirky innovations with High Civilization has been superceded by canny designs to save our public spaces from utter devastation. As long as the Cultural Deep Thinkers believe that more Bilbao Effects is the answer to our bleak public spaces, we will have to dodge intellectual Titlted Arcs in our efforts to enhance daily life with simple pleasures.Koons' Puppy love of flowers needs to return to an earth that has dramatically deteriorated all over the globe throughout the century of Modernism's esthetic malarkey.Marcel Duchamp's urinalysis turns out to be a dumb joke. Flowers are smarter.

So basically you're blaming Modern Art for just about everything you don't like about contemporary life -- except, apparently, for Alexander Calder's sculpture, and Milles too, probably. You don't like Duchamp, though you think it's darned smart of you to mention his name, and you don't like Serra, ditto ditto.

So for you, as for Tom Wolfe, modern art is mostly an opportunity for cutesy-poo remarks that display your wit and charm.

And what is the difference between this and other posters on this board who blame George Bush for everything from Global Warming to grade inflation? I have an unsightly rash on my ass-- I blame George Bush! Or at least I did until reading your post -- now i blame you.

I'm not against all Modern Art, it's Modernism as a secular theology that has finally turned me off. Strange, Modernism fought for the right of everyone to have his opinion on art and other creative matters,however idiosyncratic. But if one just suggests that Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (actually a urinal signed R.Mutt) is a dumb joke which has been taken too seriously by solemn art critics for a century, he suddenly loses the right to have an opinion. DaDa was a mental aberration brought about by the monstrousness of World War I. How long must we take its adolescent wit for Great Art? To me it's DuhDuh Dull.If half the flakey showoffs who infest our art schools took up a sensible prorfession such as landscape architecture, our cities would not be the terminal messes they've become in the century Modernism has distracted people from creating and maintaining a healthy and stimulating environment. This oddball notion comes from sixty years of art appreciation!

If half the students at the art schools became landscape architects instead, we would have record numbers of unemployed landscape architects. And your point? Most art students DO go on to do womething vaguely useful. I left art school and spent the next few years as a fooundryman, a plumber, a practical electrician and a sous-chef. I'm now a librarian. I actually picked up a lot of those skills as an art student. Go figure.

If people are willing to go nipple-deep in debt just to pursue some kind of personal realization through artwork, what in the world gives you the right or the need to sneer at them as "flakey showoffs?" It's tiresome and small of you. And if, in sixty years of art appreciation, you haven't found someone who shares your view that dada was mostly a joke, then you can not have been looking all that hard. Most art school students agree with that conslusion, at least for a while.

Finaly, there is no such thing as a secular theology. Theology, as you may have heard, is prety strictly a religious line of work. Apparently you enjoy sneering at artists and somebody didn't appreciate that. Why don't you broaden your field and try sneering at cops or firemen for a while?