Minister receives a blunt critique of his own art

The art world hit back last night at the Culture minister for describing the best of British art as "conceptual bullshit". Opponents witheringly dismissed his own artistic efforts as "perfectly ordinary".

Kim Howells, who applied his biting critique this week to the Turner prize finalists unveiled at Tate Britain, found himself the subject of a critical counterblast prompted by the news that he liked to indulge his creative side by dabbling with the paint brushes.

The minister in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport likes to apply his own artistic training, refined at a north London art college during the rebellious height of the 1960s. During breaks in the parliamentary year, he likes painting portraits and landscapes.

But when his latest oeuvre was shown to some of Britain's leading artists yesterday, it emerged that the deft politician is a grand master of only "Sunday painting". Anish Kapoor, the winner of the Turner Prize in 1991 and author of Marsyas, the 155m sculpture made from red fabric dominating the entrance hall of the Tate Modern, said he believed Dr Howells was speaking for mediocre art.

Kapoor, who also attended the Hornsey School of Art that Dr Howells studied, said: "There are many different ways to be an artist and this is what keeps art as a vibrant culture. The Sunday painting school always rears its head at the Turner Prize. In my view, they should stay at home."

The sculptor, whose latest work met with mixed reviews, added that Dr Howells's own canvasses, a collection of brightly coloured but conventional landscapes, were "not particularly good, not particularly bad, just perfectly adequate and ordinary."

Dinos Chapman, a member of the more avant-garde sector of contemporary art, said of the minister: "People in his position should be more guarded in public."

Clearly intent of damning the minister by faint praise, Mr Chapman added: "His paintings are quite nice: better than my O-level paintings."

The spat between politician-cum-artist and the professionals came after Dr Howells made his feelings on the Turner Prize finalists clear on a small note scribbled after a private viewing on Wednesday.

He wrote: "If this is the best British artists can produce then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit." Signing himself by name, he added he believed the works betrayed a "lack of conviction" among home-grown artists.

Among the candidates for the top prize that attracted his ire were a retelling of a pornographic film painted in pink letters, a Perspex ceiling in coloured stripes and giant black block entitled "The Thinker."

Dr Howells, who enrolled at Hornsey in 1965 and went on to join the Communist Party as well as producing a number of works including a giant sculpture built from scaffolding polls, said he was happy to accept he was a "Sunday painter" but insisted he stood by his comments.

Amid the artistic temperaments, it was left to his former lecturer at the college to come to his defence. Brian Yale, who taught Dr Howells for three years, said: "I remember Kim when he had just arrived from Wales in 1965. He was diligent and a very good student."