The Chapman Brothers, who judged original Goya prints to be worthy of being defaced by their own graffiti art, are now judging the UK’s most important award for painting.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, the enfants terribles of British art who added grinning clowns and Mickey Mouse to the 18th-century master’s etchings, are among five judges who have drawn up a shortlist of 40 for the £25,000 John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize.

Despite its significance for artists who know what to do with a paintbrush, the John Moores has long been overshadowed by the Tate’s £25,000 Turner Prize - whose nominees have included the Chapmans and their mannequins depicting pubescent girls sprouting male genitalia. With its focus on controversial or cutting-edge art, the Turner rarely shortlists painters.

Over the last 50 years, the biennial John Moores competition has recognised artists such as David Hockney and Richard Hamilton, prizewinners who went on to world acclaim. Peter Doig, whose White Canoe was sold by Sotheby’s last year for £5.7 million, then a record for a living European artist, described winning it in 1993 as a pivotal moment in his career.

The Chapmans, the most prominent of the judges, have recently been applauded for F****** Hell, in which tens of thousands of plastic miniature Nazi soldiers are carrying out genocide. Brian Sewell, the Evening Standard’s critic and scourge of Britart, called it the first great work of art of the 21st century.

But David Lee, editor of The Jackdaw, the satirical journal, said that the Chapman brothers would have been chosen because they are “fashionable - not because they are a good judge of painting.

“The fact that the Chapmans were on the jury will have deterred a great many serious painters from entering. There’s no question about that.”

He added: “I don’t think that the likes of the Chapman brothers are capable of selecting a fair representation of the really good painting that’s going on. I don’t think they like the kind of work that gives itself up slowly.”

The Chapmans declined to comment, but Reyahn King, Director of Galleries at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool - which will stage a major exhibition of the shortlisted work - said: “They have a strong intellectual approach about what’s happening in painting today.”

She added that the shortlist demonstrates that “far from being ‘old-fashioned’, an artist’s decision to paint is exciting and challenging... The works, selected from a record 3,222 submissions, represent the best of the UK’s current and future painting talent.”

The shortlist includes portraiture, landscapes and abstracts. Among the artists is Stuart Pearson Wright who, after winning the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award in 2001, at the age of 25, said that Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, should be sacked for championing conceptual art - such as piles of bricks - at the expense of figurative paintings.

He accused the Tate of not treating living artists equally, of making the avant garde the establishment, while figurative painters were “on the outside, shut out”.

His entry for the John Moores is Woman surprised by a werewolf, a nightmarish image inspired by the film An American Werewolf in London.

The shortlist includes previous John Moores exhibitors and first time entrants. The inspiration is wide-ranging, from the animal kingdom (Oportuno III by Georgia Hayes) to a horrific car crash (The Baptism by Neil Rumming).

Graham Crowley, an artist and juror, said: “There’s no art for airports or corporate foyers in this show. There is a great range in subject-matter and context, and an urgency to the exhibition that I hadn’t anticipated.”

The John Moores was established in 1957 by Littlewoods Pools founder Sir John Moores (1896-1993), himself a keen painter.

All shortlisted entries will be displayed at the Walker Art Gallery from September 20 until January 4 2009.

The overall winner will be announced on September 20. Apart from the prize money, their painting will also become part of the Walker’s world-renowned collection, which boasts masterpieces by Rembrandt, Monet and Turner.

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