END OF AN ERA, FRACTALFORUMS.COM IS CONTINUED ON FRACTALFORUMS.ORG

To me simply *any* Art is in the eye of the beholder (or listener or reader etc) - some would say it's in the eye/hands of the "artist", but I disagree - to me what is important is the number of people that feel something is "Art", not how strongly the artist (or not an artist) insist they are an artist or are not an artist.
Also I try to consider every work on its own merits irrespective of any other work by said artist, I prefer looking through fractals on DA or R'osity or wherever deliberately ignoring the artists' names and just based on the images (as far as possible). However when rating I do try and judge work based on my own current experience of the genre.

As to time taken to create an image the (hands off) render time is only artistically relevant if the image is obviously rendered too small to avoid (unwanted) aliasing or the like but given that such artifice is not present then the (hands off) render time is completely irrelevant to the artistic quality, though still relevant to economic value given the costs involved in processing time/power.