Judging art as if it is a sporting contest with a winner and runner-up candidates is clearly silly as there exists no objective criterion that can be applied to art. You can clearly say that this person runs fastest or jumps highest, but can you really say that this person paints the best portrait?

Compounding this is the fact that most of the judges lack serious art credentials and of the 11 members of the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales who judge the Archibald, only two, Lindy Lee and Ben Quilty, are practising artists and only one other, Eleonora Triguboff, was trained as an artist and has exhibited her work. The rest are mainly captains of industry, which is very appropriate for the membership to the Board of Trustees, but hardly a qualification to seriously pronounce judgements on art. Imagine a bunch of artists being invited into a company boardroom and being asked to decide on investments, restructures and mergers.

Despite this, the Archibald remains the show with the Midas touch, with attendance numbers going through the roof. Last year about 136,000 people came to see it, and this year the gallery has nudged up the admission charge from $10 to $12, guaranteeing an even healthier return on a very modest investment. Small wonder that curators are jealous when the crowds flock to the prizes treating them as a bit of fun, while so-called "serious" exhibitions remain frequently bereft of visitations.

This year’s 54 Archibald finalists, drawn from 884 entries, present the predictable motley crew with giant heads, slick gimmicks and humorous one-liners. Barry Humphries this year has starred well as a sitter with a clever and expressive tempera and watercolour rendition by Rodney Pople, a portrait which goes some way towards a psychological interpretation, and hanging next to it, is Tim Storrier’s predictably humorous rendition of Humphries in the guise of the drunken and lecherous Les Patterson. Storrier is one of those rare artists with bucket loads of ability, yet he spends his time on the small change of art. There is also the mandatory mix of realist, and highly realist portraits, plus the simplified cartoon-like cut-outs. Mathew Lynn’s goes beyond the restating of the visual facts, while Rebecca Hastings' self-portrait in a "onesie" does appear as ridiculous as she intended it to be. Tim Maguire’s double big head of Cate Blanchett may deliberately comment on the properties of the photographic image, but fails on a visual level as a painting. Fiona Lowry’s winning entry portrait of Penelope Seidler belongs to her series of near monochrome pale paintings, perhaps better suited to images of serial killers and their victims than to noble widows. Despite the life-size scale this portrait has little real impact.

As always the bad and silly pictures outnumber the good ones, but several deserve special mention. Paul Ryan and Anh Do have made work in the style of Quilty with rich slabs of paint, Salvatore Zofrea presents a classical and elegantly resolved painting, while Wendy Sharpe, perhaps not as exuberant as in her earlier pieces, adopts a more challenging and tightly resolved structure in her portrait of Ash Flanders. Two of the paintings which are particularly effective are Peter Churcher’s Four self-portraits in a bunch of balloons, where drawing on the conceptual devises of John Brack, he captures himself reflected in balloons, shown like Diego Velazquez painting in his studio. The gaiety of the balloons contrasts with the lonely and melancholy pursuit of the artist. The other arresting portrait is by Joe Furlonger who paints his self-portrait planted in the landscape which he so much loves to paint. A bit under life-size, it has a strong sense of presence which is not dependent on scale.

The other two prizes, the Wynne and the Sulman, appear as poor cousins of the Archibald and are rarely mentioned in the publicity. Furlonger, Storrier, Zofrea and James Powditch are repeat offenders and are both in the Archibald and the Wynne selections, while Aida Tomescu, John Walker, Philip Wolfhagen, G.W. Bot and Joshua Yeldham are included in this year’s show as Wynne Prize regulars. This year’s Wynne is the year of the big pictures with only 39 works selected out of a field of 669 works, but five of these measure between three and four metres each. The large and quite effective colour-saturated painting by Michael Johnson is this year’s Wynne Prize recipient. The small Wolfhagen holds its own in this company, and there is a delicate Tim Johnson and a clever and bold James Powditch.

The Sulman is the only one of the three prize exhibitions that is not judged the trustees, but by an artist, this year by Jenny Watson. It is strange how artists try to second-guess the judge and I have no idea if the original field of 534 works from which the 35 finalists were selected was full of Jenny Watson lookalikes. Certainly the final selection does not demonstrate a process of stylistic cloning, nor is it a particularly strong field. Mostyn Bramley-Moore’s Windblown still life is the outstanding painting in the selection, subtle and understated, but commanding a presence. Sadly it is poorly displayed outside the main exhibition area. Other strong contributions include works by Julia Ciccarone, Jeremy Kibel and Noel McKenna. Andrew Sullivan’s winning entry for the Sulman, T-rex (tyrant lizard king), is large, immaculately painted, but somewhat trite.

Part of the success of the Archibald lies with tradition – even in the general non-art public there is hardly a person who has not heard of it – but in part it must be because it is so accessible and every person feels sufficiently confident to be able to express an opinion without fearing that they will appear foolish. As a successful democratic institution the Archibald has weathered well its 93rd anniversary and today appears as strong and as popular as ever.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Art Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Closes September 28.