Art: Homage to New York?

"A machine that destroys itself," was the billing, and it proved irresistible to Manhattan's earnest pursuers of the avantgarde. Last week some 250 of them braved cold and slush to watch as Switzerland's Jean Tinguely fiddled and fussed with his 27-ft.-high tangle of white-painted iron in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. An hour and a half later, the suicide-fated machine started flaming and sawing at its mixed-up insides, turned balky despite several judiciously aimed kicks from its creator, got doused betimes by an anxious fireman, and had to be finished...