I didn't say that Art isn't subjective. And as such many things are in the eye of the beholder. I've known many women who were drop dead gorgeous, but they hadn't an ounce of beauty inside them. It didn't stop many men from thinking they were beautiful and trying not to drool too much in their presence. Many of Picasso's artist friends told him not to exhibit Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. They said it was horrendous. He exhibited it anyway, and the rest is history. I'm not a fan of Picasso either, some of his stuff is okay, some is crap. Picasso certainly wouldn't have got as well known as he did were it not for the fact he had a patron who spread his name to the right people. And when it comes to Cubism, only Picasso and Braque really did it right, lots of other Cubists regurgitated the same content, and didn't adhere to the fact that Cubism was supposed to be about making something look 3 dimensional while not using the traditional methods of doing so. Most Cubists failed in that sense, because what they created still looked flat.
Alfred Munnings probably considered something looking highly realistic to be the epitome of Art as far as paintings go. But Gustave Courbet had a different idea when it came to Realism. Basically he wouldn't paint something unless it existed. Something that was pointed out to me when I painted myself as a fallen angel. I was told that Courbet said when he saw an angel, he would paint one. My response was how did Courbet know he hadn't seen an angel. If we're supposed to accept the imagery that they have a halo and big freakin' wings, etc, then maybe we're looking for the wrong thing. Maybe we've all seen an angel, and I don't mean angel in the 'kind, considerate person' sense.
I don't deny that there are elitist fools dictating what is Art, and what isn't. A critic called Clement Greenberg wrote the rules as far as what is Modern Art, and what isn't. A critic! Some git who probably never created anything. A lot of Modern Art is pure trash, literally. But if it attracts the attention of the right people, and sells for thousands, or even millions, then what does the artist who created it give a rats ass whether people think it's Art or not. Art is a business these days, more than anything. I highly doubt I'll ever sell my own work for anything more than a couple of hundred, if that. But as long as I've done something that made me happy, and helped me say something about how I saw the world, what do I care.
Yes, I agreed with my tutors point of view. Just because I can make a table, it doesn't make me a Carpenter. But just because I agreed with his point of view, it doesn't mean I was one of the 3 or 4 he was talking about. He never said who was or wasn't an artist in his mind. And if he had done so, maybe I'd have disagreed with him. I seemed to bang heads with him regarding pretty much everything else. In fact, that point of view was probably one of the few times I did agree with him.