Thanks to my mother and my background of her home-schooling me, I received contact with and an understanding of art at a young age. Art is fundamentally communication, especially the communication of emotion. So it must be judged two ways, technically, and philosophically.
The technical side, is clearly, the "technique" of communication, the actual method and presentation. The technique is good if it makes the communication of the idea clear or striking, which is the philosophical side. The philosophical side is to be judged on the greatness of the idea.
As an example of good art, the Vatican is almost universally fantastic, the art is clear enough that pilgrims worldwide experience the power of the Christian idea in a way that is clear enough to be understood by men from every conceivable ethnic background, level of education, and economic status without explanation. The primary idea, in my mind, is one grandeur, majesty.
On these criteria, the Guggenheim and everything I saw there was a monumental failure. Most of the artworks failed to communicate without explanation and the ideas behind them suffered from an extreme poverty. Poorly packaged savage misandry mostly, it seemed.
Whence the success? Self appointed elites qualified by their own hubris. Great art is understood by both great and mean, albeit on differing levels. Great art is not contingent on a lack of understanding by the unwashed, breathing in the rarefied air of "true understanding".
This emperor has no clothes.
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