To me, what Warhol did doesn't really count: His art was based on fakery, irony and cynicism -- with a little playfulness thrown in, sure -- but Madonna's doing it in a much more mainstream way. And I think it's worth noting the way she did it: Madonna -- unlike Warhol, who came on as a serious artist -- came onto the scene as a pop star, and so set up the expectation that she was simply going to be this incredibly popular, but not particularly deep, creature. And then, starting with "Like a Virgin" and even the "Boy Toy" belt, and calling her companies Slutco, etc., she suddenly turned into an artist. So she slipped her art in through the back door of her career, and in the process she made art as important, as salable, as influential as anything else.

The nature of celebrity has changed, and I don't think it's necessarily for the worse. Being a modern celebrity does not necessarily mean being hollow or a sellout. Instead, it seems to me, it often means that there is a message at the core of one's art that is bigger than a particular project, movie or record. Talent is having something to say, or to stand for. And that's what Madonna, and frankly even Drew Barrymore and Puffy, do: They have a message that supersedes any medium they're working in at the time. Actors aren't really actors anymore, and musicians aren't really musicians anymore. Madonna is as much a marketer as a singer; she conflates art and commerce, and her persona overshadows her records. But to me that's all an expansion of her role rather than a cop-out or a corrupting force culturally.

I was about 22 when "Sex" came out, and I found her strength, in a sense, confusing -- everything from her biceps to her almost masculine power morphed with a voracious sexual appetite. I remember being a little put off by the book and embarrassed, even as I thought it was in some ways courageous. And although I didn't change my own sexual behavior in the wake of it (I was a model of chastity at the time -- working in New York magazines and surrounded by gay men), I also remember feeling a sort of disconnect between what she was portraying about sexuality and the truth about sexuality.

She seemed to present herself as having discovered something, to be standing for the right way to be, and yet she also had such a barren love life in the real world. I don't know why. Is it because she had to be so strong -- both physically and mentally -- to break through the barriers of cultural mores and lost touch with her own vulnerability, and thereby lost touch with love? Is it that men can't handle strong women? I don't know, but it's disturbing to me. It's the one thing that makes her seem a little hopeless -- or culture seem a little hopeless: that she keeps ending up with men like Guy Ritchie, who is -- despite her protestations -- not her equal. And that's sad to me. Why can't Madonna find a cool boyfriend??!!

Goldberg: I confess to longing for integrity and authenticity in pop music because I believe that the nature of contemporary celebrity is a grotesque, soul-eroding thing. I certainly wouldn't want a return of the illusion that artists should be untainted by filthy lucre -- God knows, creative people need to learn how to take care of themselves financially. Nonetheless, I think the current notion of celebrity as an art form that Madonna helped propagate has hideous consequences. It means that hype replaces content as the measure of artistic success, essentially ensuring that those with real messages are indeed speaking into the wind. Perhaps it was ever thus -- cutting-edge artists have by definition always toiled out of the mainstream. What's changed, though, is the idea that fame is its own artistic validation and that the market is the ultimate arbiter of cultural worth. That seems to me a detestable state of affairs.

As for Guy Ritchie, he's clearly not her equal professionally, but given that she's possibly the most famous woman in the world, who is? President Clinton? In any relationship there are power imbalances -- why shouldn't she be the stronger one? Her very public relationship with a sexy younger man is one area in which she does seem like a feminist pioneer to me. Hopefully, he worships her and treats her like a goddess in a way that a man who was as renowned as she is might not.

And anyway, Ritchie's film "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is, by my standards of artistic worth, better than just about anything Madonna's ever done. Of course, it doesn't begin to compare with her work culturally or politically. But I felt a transporting thrill watching that movie that I've never gotten from any of Madonna's output. I think that's largely how art should be judged -- in terms of one-on-one aesthetic elation instead of popularity or even social consequence. A celebrity's persona or business skills don't matter when you're alone in your room with her music or sitting in the dark and watching her on-screen. Art should make you light up or break down, turn the banal sublime, elucidate a slice of the world or confuse what seemed settled; it should do more than just impress you with savvy branding.

Saroyan: Madonna has gone to the very edge of what is acceptable for a woman to be -- professionally, sexually -- and even sometimes tipped over it. She baits with surfaces and delivers depth. To me, she is authentic and does have integrity.

Puffy and Drew Barrymore are not at the level that Madonna is, obviously. But part of their talent, like Madonna's, and part of what makes them modern are that they have a message they're telescoping through their celebritydom. Drew is about spirit and turning a lot of the starlet crap upside down -- she's very much herself, and not about trying to be someone else, or have someone else's body, etc. Puffy is a successful young black man, a business professional as well as a rapper, dating an equally strong woman. These people are role models quite clearly and, although obviously flawed, I think they are inspiring to many, many people. Their fame is enhanced by people tapping into and being interested in and responding to who they are. Maybe that's part of Madonna's legacy.

But now, for the first time in her life, Madonna's not reinventing the goddamn wheel. That says that she's giving up a little bit. She's OK with doing her own thing, with perhaps even fading out a little in her public life, because she is -- or at least she seems to be -- fading in more clearly to her own personal life. As she said when Charlie Rose asked her about her daughter, Lola, "It used to be just me, me, me. Now it's me, her, me." It was funny, and it was real -- the best of what Madonna has always been. Behind all the glitter, there's always been a real woman there. Now she's just getting more comfortable with her.

Goldberg: I don't see Madonna's various guises connecting to anything more profound than her own ego. I watch her videos: Madonna in Marilyn drag; Madonna in her dominatrix suit; Madonna with a bindi. But all the symbols she appropriates never seem like much more than props for her celebrity. I found "Sex" far less sexy than any random issue of Penthouse or even Hustler because I was always aware that all the scenes were just tableaux meant to show off Madonna's erotic assets. Her only message was just what she said on "Charlie Rose" -- "me, me, me." Inasmuch as she's legitimized female ambition and self-direction, she's had a salutary impact on women's lives. And I like her public personality, her brazen sass. To me, though, that doesn't add much artistic significance to all her costume changes.

That said, the new record is refreshing precisely because it's not a big conceptual statement -- it feels more personal and honest than anything she's ever done, even if she does insist on singing a verse in French on "Paradise (Not for Me)." If some of Madonna's other incarnations seemed false it was precisely because she always appeared to be the same high-strung striver whether she was posed as the black vinyl bondage queen, the soignée diva of her "Evita" period or the rich hippie of "Ray of Light" (where she reminded me of nothing so much as Edina of "Absolutely Fabulous").

Here, finally, she isn't trying quite so hard to be someone else. I think that makes the melancholy, introspective "I Deserve It" more effective as a statement of self-acceptance than the bombastic exhortations of "Express Yourself." The calm, reflective feel of "Music" signals inner peace to me much more powerfully than the ostentatious mystical kitsch of "Ray of Light." So maybe Madonna is a role model after all -- as a woman who has transcended the false salvation of endless self-transformation, settled into herself and actually improved with age.

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