By the artist's or the viewer's or the displayer's authority. Art can certainly be ugly, produced entirely without technical skill and be labelled 'bad'. It's

By the artist's or the viewer's or the displayer's authority. Art can certainly be ugly, produced entirely without technical skill and be labelled 'bad'. It's still art. Value doesn't come from only positive attributes. Likewise it can have no meaning, or none intended, or none available to you. It's still art. We often try and apply objective measurability towards the 'artness' of a thing, which takes us in self-referential circles of decreasing usefulness. When instead we need to let go and accept subjective immeasurability. The only number that can be put on art is its sale value which most will agree is a highly misleading metric by which to understand art's value.