Intolerance, arrogance, and occasionally downright nastiness are the predictable responses of those involved in the contemporary art movement whenever conceptual art is under attack.

The enforced resignation of Ivan Massow as chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London came as no surprise.

What a deeply unpleasant bunch of prigs the institute's council must be to take themselves so desperately seriously.

What had Massow done that was so dreadful? He had told the truth as he saw it. After all, free speech is something we are rather proud of in Britain, is it not?

He made the reasonable comment that most conceptual art, made fashionable by the Damien Hirst generation, was 'pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat'. Well, yes. Many of us have been pointing that out consistently for some time.

He thought it was all hype, frequently no substance and 'the British arts world is in now in danger of disappearing up its own arse'.

I could not have put it more succinctly. He even made a personal attack on Tracey Emin, famous for the Tate display of her dirty bedroom habits, saying 'she couldn't think her way out of a paper bag'.

Massow's comments were not made privately and mischievously leaked to a tabloid newspaper.

He wrote them for the left-wing political magazine New Statesman and threw the art world into paroxysms of rage or laughter - depending on allegiances.

He is an interesting character. A 34-year-old gay, fox-hunting, millionaire bon viveur.

Once a potential Tory parliamentary candidate, he has switched to Labour. He took on the chairmanship of the ailing Institute of Contemporary Arts, one of Britain's leading avant- garde public galleries, to help them raise money.

When he arrived three years ago, it was half a million pounds in the red. He says it is now half a million in profit.

But in these confrontations, the contemporary art establishment of gallery directors, dealers, critics and directors adopt their conventional attack mode of reviling and ridiculing.

One member of the ICA council described Massow as a wonderful self-publicist. Another decried his fund-raising skills. It is all so silly, so demeaning.

The fact is our art schools are churning out a generation of sculptors and artists for whom presentation and publicity, however gimmicky, are all-important.

They have had virtually no training in drawing or sculpting from life. They are graduating without even a basic understanding of anatomy, let alone how to model clay.

Madame Tussaud's has had to search as far afield as Azerbajan to find students with the basic skills who could fashion high quality, life-like waxworks. No young artists here were capable of the work.

As one acerbic London art critic wrote so exquisitely of an elephant dung painting that won a Turner Prize at the Tate: "I am so tired of seeing shit masquerading as art."

Who said the art world was boring?