The thing about a work of art being "good" is that it also largely depends on the surrounding art traditions of the time. Picasso's early works contributed most to new aesthetic thinking and the discussion of the nature of art, and within that context they are revolutionary and genius.
To give another example, in my opinion Duchamp's readymades were a genius piece of artistic trolling, great thought-provoking statements on aesthetics and the nature of art. Pretty much everyone who followed missed the point, as they did not add anything significant to the discussion - they just accepted the Fountain as art and proof that their readymades are therefore also valuable art.
Also, with many works of art you really need to see the real thing to even get the opportunity to "get" it. A real Mondrian is much better than you would expect based on pictures, because it's possible to empathise and "feel" how the artist made his brush strokes, the emotion behind it. That embodied experience of a work of art, which is essential to the readability of a painting, or any work of art, is often lost when translated to a digital JPG.
As for your last point, you fall for the mistake of believing that the external objective truth, which applies to the natural sciences, applies to art. Art is about (partially shared) subjective experiences, which can still be quantified to some degree if put in the proper context, but not in the same meaningful way we can calculate the value of Pi. For example, our eyes work mostly the same across our species, so before interpreting what we see the input should be largely similar, creating similarity in otherwise subjective experiences. But it's obvious that this similarity in perception is limited.
I suggest "Philosophy in the Flesh", by Lakoff and Johnson, if you want a nice empirically grounded discussion related to this - they apply empirical insights from the cognitive sciences to philosophy and in the process give you a good non-magical sense of how this subjective but shared experience works.
To give another example, in my opinion Duchamp's readymades were a genius piece of artistic trolling, great thought-provoking statements on aesthetics and the nature of art. Pretty much everyone who followed missed the point, as they did not add anything significant to the discussion - they just accepted the Fountain as art and proof that their readymades are therefore also valuable art.
Also, with many works of art you really need to see the real thing to even get the opportunity to "get" it. A real Mondrian is much better than you would expect based on pictures, because it's possible to empathise and "feel" how the artist made his brush strokes, the emotion behind it. That embodied experience of a work of art, which is essential to the readability of a painting, or any work of art, is often lost when translated to a digital JPG.
As for your last point, you fall for the mistake of believing that the external objective truth, which applies to the natural sciences, applies to art. Art is about (partially shared) subjective experiences, which can still be quantified to some degree if put in the proper context, but not in the same meaningful way we can calculate the value of Pi. For example, our eyes work mostly the same across our species, so before interpreting what we see the input should be largely similar, creating similarity in otherwise subjective experiences. But it's obvious that this similarity in perception is limited.
I suggest "Philosophy in the Flesh", by Lakoff and Johnson, if you want a nice empirically grounded discussion related to this - they apply empirical insights from the cognitive sciences to philosophy and in the process give you a good non-magical sense of how this subjective but shared experience works.