JOSE MARIA DE CREEFT

Jose Maria de Creeft, a sculptor, teacher and leading exponent of the direct method of sculpture, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97 years old and also had a home and studio in Hoosick Falls, N.Y. Mr. de Creeft, who was born in Spain, lived and worked in France for many years before coming to the United States in 1929. He became an American citizen in 1940

THERE is a rumor - neither confirmed nor denied by city officials - that some pigeons from out of town, seeking a spot for their annual convention, have turned down Central Park because they find the statues dull.

But pigeons will be pigeons; may their tribe decrease. For me, the 50-odd bronze and stone monuments - literary, military, historical, political and animal - deployed through the park's rolling acres exude a compelling charisma. From the grandiose tribute to the battleship Maine at the Columbus Circle entrance, to the heroic likeness of Balto, the dogged malamute that in 1925 led the sled team that rushed diphtheria serum to needy Nome, Alaska, they form a lively pastiche of the past that helps put the present in perspective. (Who, for instance, remembers Fitz-Greene Halleck, acclaimed in the 19th century as a wit and a poet, and whose foppish figure is one of the literary lineup on the Mall?) So, while others use the park to hike, jog, skate, bike, boat, bird-watch, picnic or play croquet, I hang out with its monuments. And there is ample evidence that local birds, at least, do, too.

It is true that the statues, a number of which need restoration, are not always esthetically rewarding. When they are good, they are very, very good; when they are bad, they are horrid. It would not be stretching things, in fact, to say that some - such as the gawky, glassy-eyed image of Robert Burns near the south end of the Mall - could easily qualify as kitsch. On the other hand, Saint-Gaudens's equestrian evocation of General Sherman that adorns the park's south corner near Fifth Avenue remains one of the finest pieces of public sculpture in this or any city.

But love them or leave them, these often corny monuments are in the park to stay. And in a city overstocked with the dernier cri in art and architecture, they have their refreshing place. Some make wonderful playmates for children, especially the statues of Hans Christian Andersen and Alice in Wonderland on the edge of Conservatory Water. Some are decorative, like ''The Falconer,'' a pretty medieval boy with a hawk perched on his hand, who enlivens a rock pile at the 72d Street Transverse. Some are truly art, like Saint-Gaudens's Sherman and ''The Indian Hunter,'' by John Quincy Adams Ward, near the Mall. And some, like Karl M. Illava's poignant monument to the 107th infantry in World War I, at Fifth Avenue and 67th Street, put us in touch with the drama of history in a way that abstract art cannot.

Although Central Park was contrived to provide fresh air and landscape, without the intrusion of ''artificial objects,'' this statusy bosk has always been a magnet for bronze and stone memorials. No sooner, in fact, had the park got started in 1857 than the push began to put statues in it. As Lewis Sharp, curator of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, notes in an essay for Elizabeth Barlow's ''Central Park Book'' (1977), ''monument mania'' was in the air, and by 1873, 20 proposals had already been made. The first one accepted, in 1859, was a remarkably silly bust of the German poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller - now on the Mall - presented by the German community in New York to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. And then the race began.