Italy's culture minister has enraged members of the country's arts community with an attack on modern architecture and an admission that he is completely mystified by contemporary art. Sandro Bondi told the magazine Grazia: "I struggle to find evidence of beauty in contemporary art. If I go to an exhibition I pretend to understand, like many others. But, honestly, I don't understand." The comments follow a number of attacks on modern architecture by ministers including Bondi and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that has left the arts world aghast. Bondi's views drew a stinging response from Francesco Bonami, a curator who has directed the Venice Biennale, the world's most important contemporary art gathering. "Bondi appears to have fallen asleep in 1895, when the Biennale was launched, to then reawake in 2008," he told La Stampa. "You cannot rely on an antiquated concept of beauty, that's like wanting to go back to the horse and cart." But Berlusconi's minister appears to be on a roll. Last week he slammed the ultra-modern steel and stone loggia designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and planned for Florence's Uffizi gallery. "How could it live alongside the adjacent loggias designed by Giorgio Vasari without shocking Florentines and visitors from all over the world?" demanded Bondi, referring to the 16th-century artist and architect. A philosophy graduate and former communist, Bondi joined Berlusconi when the TV mogul entered politics in 1994, rising to become spokesman for his Forza Italia party, then minister, while continuing to publish poetry, some of which is dedicated to his political patron. Berlusconi has also come down firmly in favour of traditional architecture since his return to power in April, calling a curved skyscraper planned for Milan by the American architect Daniel Libeskind "horrifying" and asking for it to be straightened. Libeskind, who is overseeing the development of the site of the World Trade Centre in New York, shot back, drawing a parallel between Berlusconi's taste in skyscrapers and his nationalist brand of politics. "Under fascism in Italy, everything that was not straight or in line was also deemed perverted art," he told the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. In Rome, the mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has led a campaign against the new, bold white building housing the first-century BC Ara Pacis altar, designed by the American architect Richard Meier. Last month, culture undersecretary Francesco Maria Giro joined him, saying the building clashed with Rome's antique fabric and that it would be knocked down if the government could afford it, or at the very least a protruding wall would be demolished. But Roman architect Francesco Coppari warned: "If Rome carries on in this way, it will become a beautiful necropolis, beautiful for the Japanese who come for the shopping and the Americans who get drunk in the centre. But it certainly won't be a modern city."