A FURIOUS artist claims his skilfully crafted sculptures failed to find favour -- while praise was heaped on the artistic merits of works such as a bath full of rancid spaghetti hoops.

Bob Burden has just completed his art degree at Bolton Institute where he says praise was given to "conceptual and installation" art.

This included tapes of arguments, a student standing in the town centre with a model of male genitalia on his head and a life-sized bathroom which included the bath full of spaghetti, a sink full of blue mashed potato and a pair of Wellington boots full of green pasta.

Bob, aged 71, was a mature student based at the Chadwick Street campus of the Bolton Institute and says he was shocked to discover on enrolling on his three-year course that there were students doing the art degree who freely admitted they could not draw.

Bob, who had always been keen on painting and drawing, decided to embark on the degree course on the advice of his neurologist after suffering a stroke.

He said: "The whole experience taught me that what art colleges want these days is not something visual that people can look at and enjoy, but a piece of nebulous and portentous work with accompanying text to confuse and perplex the viewer, preferably with more than a hint of salaciousness thrown in.

"These are the required qualities of a 'good conceptual artist' by today's standards.

"My years spent at Bolton have been three years of discord, as I have been persistent in my continuance in working in a classical style and my refusal to comply with the modern trend in conceptual and installation art, as some of the present tutors desire.

"My pieces always sold well when exhibited. When I mentioned this, I was told commercialism does not make a successful artist." He added: "I cannot see any future for students whose profuse talent is to produce the rhetoric to justify work that is unrecognisable as anything that we know of.

"They are going to have problems when they have to earn a living, because the Damien Hirsts and Tracy Emins, who have been most fortunate in their lives, are very few and far between.

He has now lodged a complaint with the Institute.

He said: "The whole experience has left me very disillusioned."

A spokesman for Bolton Institute said: "Mr Burden's complaints are being dealt with in accordance with the Institute's complaints procedure. We can make no further comment at this time."

WHAT constitutes a work of art? A screwed up piece of paper? A room full of balloons? Or a piece of Blu-Tack stuck up on a wall?

The correct answer is all of the above -- and each one was done by last year's Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed. He won the prize with a single light bulb switching on and off in a white empty room. A previous winner was Tracy Emin's now infamous unmade bed.

And Damien Hirst is famed for his shocking installation of a cow split in half and left in a large container of formaldehyde.

What do you think of modern art? Write to to Letters to the Editor, Bolton Evening News, Newspaper House, Churchgate, Bolton BL1 1DE, or e-mail letters@boltoneveningnews.co.uk