UK culture minister Kim Howells has big ideas about art. He wants boldness. He wants imagination. He wants something new. So you might think the art he made himself might be all (or even some) of these things. You’d be wrong. “It turns out that his idea of art, as manifested in the example of his own work sold at a charity auction (to the organiser, a friend) for £60 is disappointingly, or gratifyingly if you want to put the boot in, dull. Dull isn’t the word. This laborious, insipid excuse for a drawing is a piece of middle-class kitsch so lacking in life that it could win the Daily Mail’s competition for ‘real’ art. Howells’ drawing is nerveless and oddly lacking in warmth – the very opposite of his public persona.”