Madonna is pop art

Madonna has always held a unique fascination for me: the myth, the legend, but not the truth. Who cares about Madonna "the person"? Her impending divorce is only of interest in terms of how she packages it into the Madonna Myth.

And what a myth! A dancer from Detroit, coming to New York City with $35 in her pocket, no contacts, and dropped by a taxi driver in Times Square after a request to be "'where the action is" to go on and dictate popular culture for the next 30 years? Madonna and Michael Jackson invented the Queen and King of Pop, and took the ideas of rock'n'roll myth-making into the pop world.

In 1992, I met Jackson; he was playing an eight run show at the Tokyo Dome and I was there with Bobby Gillespie. Gillespie wanted to attend the shows and meet the man but was denied by Sony, who thought he was too uncontrollable and off his head on drugs (ironic considering that I was doing more drugs than Bob at the time). It was pure religious spectacle being in an arena with 50,000 Jackson fans in the midst of pop hysteria. After the show, I was taken to meet Jackson and it was like having an audience with the Pope. It was pure dada; you were taken behind a screen where you had your photograph taken with Jackson.

However, I've never wanted to meet Madonna. Madonna the spectacle, yes. Madonna, the cultural provocateur, yes. Madonna, the producer, not creator, yes. Madonna, the person, no. It's almost as if she is incapable of being anything other than Madonna The Myth, something she has created. I love it. Who would want to meet Madonna when the myth has a more fantastic life of its own?

You could blame the myth on the cab driver who dropped her off where the action was hot. In '77 NYC (the year of Punk, Disco and Madonna) there was an art revolution going on: Television, Blondie, Arthur Russell, Larry Levine's Paradise Garage, the Ramones, disco, punk rock, club culture and, of course, the godfather of New York City, Andy Warhol. Warhol has held sway over her entire career. Madonna, like Warhol, is the ultimate observer of, rather than participant in, modern culture. She took Warhol's template of ambition and success being an art form and regenerated it into a pop career presented not only as art, but a mirror on society, reflecting our tastes and aspirations; whether it be the yuppie life of Material Girl to the pre-00 new age observations of Ray of Light. Her reinventions are a reflection of us, not her, as she has always lacked a 'grand purpose' or 'natural conclusion' of most rock'n'roll stories.

Madonna is at her best when exploiting religion and sex to court controversy. The woman has been banned by countries! Countries! The woman used a black Jesus, self inflicted stigmatas, and danced in a field of burning crosses in order to sell Pepsi! Total pop genius. Is Madonna even sexy? Madonna 'sexy' is parody and camp, yet she regularly presents herself as sex object and deviant to middle America and MTV. Dressed as a dominatrix, kissing Britney and Christine Aguilera? Check. A 50-year-old in a leotard disco dancing in a dark club combating ageism in rock and doing it with style? Check. Cross-dressing and getting dangerously close to transvestism in Vogue? Check. It's sex for profit! It's sex as camp! It's sex as parody!

In the early 90s, she took sex too far for even America. But she still knew how to turn controversy into profit, and when Justify my Love was banned by MTV, she publicised the ban and sold the video separately. She somehow also found time to accidentally invent rock'n'roll reality television with her documentary In Bed with Madonna.

After the Sex debacle, she reinvented herself as Madonna, the Serious Artist with Bedtime Stories (and collaborations with Bjork) and Ray of Light; consolidating it with the Mirwais-produced Music in 2000 (the only time I've got involved with Madonna is the chase for Mirwais, her producer - we wanted him for Creation Records, however she signed him up to Maverick).

She went too far with American Life, though. Madonna tried to change the world and failed (Madonna could never be Jesus Christ - or John Lennon - with a message; after all her message for 30 years has been 'Hey, how hot is Jesus?'). Warhol never delivered a moral message and neither should Madonna; she went back to basics and the dancefloor with Confessions on a Dance Floor and Hard Candy.

A friend sent me over a passage from Madonna's brother's tell-all biography My Life with Sister Madonna. She said it offers no real revelations and was trashy (with the rumour being Madonna approved it ... genius!), but the brother's statement "I fear she no longer has any boundaries, any limits. Everyone and everything is grist for the publicity mill, fodder for her career - even our late mother". The passage was supposed to be a damning indictment, but ending up being a succinct reading of Madonna's career. Madonna is post-modern art, the likes of which we will never see again.