Critics have united in their condemnation of British artist Damien Hirst’s latest works – a series of paintings that are on show at the Wallace Collection in London.

At times it seems the 44-year-old, famous for his pickled animals, pill cabinets and spot paintings, can do no wrong. Just over a year ago he made 111 million pounds at a sale of new works, confirming his status as the most sought-after living artist.

His work has always divided critics and the public alike. What is unusual about the reaction to his new paintings is that opinion against him is near-unanimous. Rachel Campbell-Johnston of the Times sums up the mood succinctly with the words: “The paintings are dreadful. Think Francis Bacon meets Adrian Mole.”

Hirst says he painted the works – many of which which feature images of white skulls on dark blue-black backgrounds – himself, unlike his spot paintings, which are produced by others in his studio. So there is a sense among detractors that he has been found out as someone whose artistic technique is lacking.

And to make it worst, Hirst fell to 48th place in ArtReview’s annual list of the art world’s most powerful figures from top spot a year ago, although his freefall was largely explained by his absence from the limelight for the past 12 months.

The immediate impact of the backlash is tempered by the fact that most of the new paintings have already been bought, by Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk. But there is a sense that the Hirst brand, arguably contemporary art’s most successful in recent years, has lost some of its lustre.

Britain’s Turner Prize prides itself on whipping up the art world’s equivalent of a storm each year with exhibits that are often designed to shock and upset. The only shock this time around, it seems, is that there is no shock.

Sure, Cathy Wilkes has a mannequin sitting cross-legged on a toilet as part of her installation, but critics are saying that that’s about as close as the four shortlisted artists come to anything like controversy. Let’s not forget, the annual award has been won recently by a man in a bear suit, a shed-cum-boat-cum-shed and an empty room in which the lights go on and off.

“Turn up, tune in and drop off,” writes Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston. She likens the experience of seeing the Turner Prize exhibition at London’s Tate Britain gallery to the returns desk at Ikea on a Monday morning: “Lots of frustrated people will be left staring at a pile of inscrutable junk.”

Richard Dorment in the Telegraph is also underwhelmed. “Who cares who wins?” his piece is titled, and opens with a description of all four artists’ work as “technically competent, bland and ultimately empty art made specifically for international biennales.”

But at least someone liked the show. Adrian Searle in the Guardian wrote: “There’s a depth and complexity here that, it would be nice to think, might overtake the usual chat about winners and losers.”

Think what you like about the art – and several leading critics question whether it is art at all – there are enough people desperate to get their hands on an original Damien Hirst to ensure that his recent, audacious sale of 223 new works at Sotheby’s was a resounding success.

Commentators have huffed and puffed about the insanity of it all — Damien Hirst, reproducing the kind of works he has been creating for years, yet still able to earn a staggering 111 million pounds (minus commission to the auctioneer) to add to his already sizeable fortune.

But to criticise the 43-year-old, the contemporary art world’s most famous figure, is nigh impossible. After all, if people are willing to pay over eight or nine million pounds for an animal in a tank of formaldehyde, it’s not his fault.

“It is as if Hirst, tongue-in-cheek, were making a false form of his own work — and doing it deliberately to make fools of the sort of people naive and vulgar enough to spend thousands on a jewel-encrusted mobile telephone,” wrote critic Andrew Graham-Dixon in the Sunday Telegraph.

Hirst said he wanted to make the art world more “democratic” by going straight to the auction house rather than through galleries and dealers who take a much larger slice of the pie. Democracy for millionaires, that is.

The ”Is It Art” debate is up and running again in the UK. Unsurprisingly, it involves Martin Creed, a conceptual artist who most famously won the Turner Prize in 2001 for his installation of an empty room with a light switching on and off.

Well, Creed is back, this time with a work involving runners sprinting the length of Tate Britain’s neo-classical galleries (86 metres in all) at 30 second intervals. 50 people earning $20 an hour will keep “Work No 850″ going for the next four months or so, and the gallery has warned visitors not to interfere with the sprinters. It will be interesting to see how they cope on a crowded Sunday afternoon.

Asked if he thought the work pretentious, the artist pointed out that, literally speaking, it was not, as these people were not pretending to run, but were actually doing it.

The Times produced a “for” and “against” column to discuss the artistic merits of Work No 850. In the Creed corner, its art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston calls it “silly, reckless, exhilirating and wonderful” and says “it makes you feel more alive. What more can you want?”. In the skeptics’ corner, David Lee of art publication The Jackdaw counters: “The concepts in most conceptual art are frequently extremely small ones barely worth the illustration. Now, we are presented with a work in which there is not even a concept.” He dismisses the piece as a stunt to raise the profile both of the gallery and of the artist.

So, well before this year’s Turner Prize exhibition at none other than Tate Britain sparks the “Is It Art” debate all over again, where do you stand on Creed’s creation?

OK, there are some artists out there who are considered to be pretty special. Michelangelo could carve a mean nude and Picasso was quite good at painting in blue. But visiting a new exhibition this week made me wonder whether the most important factor in an artist’s success or otherwise is none other than Lady Luck?

Mat Collishaw was part of the “Young British Artists” brat pack in the 1990s, and had a relationship with one of its leading lights Tracey Emin. Like his contemporaries, his art had the power to shock and disturb. His ideas, it seems to me, were no less interesting than his peers’, and his technical ability on a par. And yet, while Hirst, and to a lesser extent, Emin rose to superstardom and considerable wealth, others like Collishaw did not.

Hirst, in some ways, is the Warhol of his time, with a keen eye on what the media and collectors like Charles Saatchi can do for his profile. He is also seen by some as a genius who developed a new way of making art. Perhaps he deserves more credit than he tends to get for amassing a personal fortune estimated at over $250 million.

But at the same time the question lingers – is Hirst really any better than Collishaw, or, for that matter, any other of his contemporaries who have receded into relative obscurity? If not, then did he just get lucky?