Why is some art considered “good”, and other art is obviously not?
Whatever the medium, art is a gift from the artist to the receiver, and it demands a response.
It is the nature of art to draw the receiver in to interact in some way with it. It is the nature of good art to force the receiver to dig beneath the surface display in order to find the true depth of meaning and beauty in the piece.
Why? Because that is the nature of life. It is a struggle, a digging, an effort to discover meaning underneath the mundane strokes of everyday existence.
Average art is pretty and well-packaged and gives you all the right answers without much effort. Good art, on the other hand, often takes more effort to engage with, because it does not shy away from the digging or try to escape the struggle.
It finds the beauty in it.