7 DECEMBER 1996, Page 36

Absurd suggestion

Sir: Even from the perspective of distant Australia, Edward Lucie-Smith's claim in your pages (Arts, 30 November) that 'now Francis Bacon is dead, David Hockney is Britain's most celebrated artist' is absurd. Indeed, I can think of no one anywhere whose views I respect in the slightest who believes Hockney is a more significant artist than Lucian Freud — who may well prove the foremost British painter of this century. It would be disappointing to believe that the days of informed art criticism in this journal are a thing of the past.

Giles Auty

44/11 Sutherland Crescent, Darling Point, Sydney, NSW 2027,