I fully agree with what you say about the 
difficulty of judging art. But :

> I disagree that the  mere *presence* of these
> techniques, even if they're correctly executed,
> automatically makes the art "good".

Sure, that's missing the most important thing : 
creativity and originality (Which in itself is a 
criteria : Com'on, it is possible to say, in a 
fairly objective way, if an artwork is original/
new or if it's mere plagia)

But the abscence, misuse of those techniques 
nearly always make the art "bad". Remember, we 
weren't speaking about good anime. But bad one...

Also an anime is not exactly an artwork. It's a 
commercial produce. The "technic" part in an anime 
is much more obvious (if perhaps not important) 
than in a painting, music or other.

> Even "bad animation" isn't as clear cut as it 
> might seem on the surface.

It is : by "animation" we usualy mean the number 
of frames per seconds and if it's jerky or smooth 
with well done transition. If characters seems to 
move in a natural way or not,...

> But try to put that  style of art onto something

The "style of art" has nothing to do with how it 
is animated. It's something differant.

> So to judge "good" versus "bad", you have to 
> actually concretely decide what you expect of
> good" art.

Well, it's not me who said you had to judge by "
good" versus "bad". In fact, if I remember (which 
is easy, the message being posted here), I was 
more or less telling not to judge by "good" and
"bad" but by "like" and "dislike". (Until someone 
started that crap about "all anime are born equal" 
or something like th. Because I dared sugesting 
that most people, and especialy professional, 
agree that some anime are not as good as others 
and that it's not based on what they like or not)
Many messages were saying "this anime is totaly 
bad" but for purely subjective reasons.

Cheers,
Yann Stettler