Don quixote was a success, so much so that people made fake sequels and Cervantes was forced to make the true sequel. Shakespeare didn't do bad for himself in his time. He was well-received. Obviously no-one saw him as he is today, because you need time and perspective to do that. Flaubert's Madame Bovary was well-received. And so on. Not every great classic comes from controversy. How could the Iliad be received badly, when it's oral literature that the "bards" (or however they were called in Ancient Greece) had to memorise to recite in front of people, they would do that only to then be shunned or criticised? It would make no sense. Alexander the Great took a copy of the Iliad with him, wherever he went.
I always roll my eyes when someone tries to come up with "intelligence/quality measures" for things like music for example.
I heard of a study that analyzed how the lyrics and the structure of melodies are getting stupider and simpler every decade, at least in the pop genre. Is not that difficult, after all, music is even closer to what you say is hte only objective thing, mathematics: if you know how to read music you can see the metrics of the song getting simpler and more repetitive. These days a song like Mike Oldfield's Five miles out wouldn't even hit the radio, despite that it was deliberately a radio-friendly song he made.
Really, this idea that quality is entirely subjective is baffling. How could you tell, then, when a work is amateurish vs. professional? That's right, one is objectively better than the other. You can always tell an amateurish, superhero-style inspired drawing and the real thing. You may not like this style of drawing or that type of genre, that's taste and it's subjective, but not be able to tell when something's well-written or well-drawn even if you don't like it? That's a very superficial way of approaching a work of art.
