smiling bandit, you’re distinguishing between good art and bad art; not between art and not-art.
My definition may be a bit more restrictive than lessener’s, bandit, but in this case I agree. Skill in execution can be a measure of the quality of a piece of art, but is not a fit criterion for determining whether a thing is art or not. In essence, I think that if a thing was meant by its creator to be art, then it is art. It may be unsuccessful art, or bad art, or offensive art, but it’s still art.
Arrrt. [sub]This “art” piratified by PANTLAPD (Pirates for the Advancement of National Talk Like A Pirate Day).[/sub]
[Franz Liebkind]
… and Hitler was a better painter than Churchill too! He could do an entire apartment in one day, two coats!
[/Franz Liebkind]
“Art” is too loose a term to be described like so. The flatscreen monitor I’m looking at while I type this has been assembled with parts that have used the “art” of plastic molds, wiring… the 1’X1’ piece of linoleum below my chair has a speckled blue, dark blue, and gray color formation on it, no doubt created with the “art” of linoleum construction.
The day-old coffee spill on the sidewalk outside right now can be art, if you want it to be. It has a shape designated by physics alone, a splattered masterpiece by Mother Nature (and someone’s buttery fingers).
Just because so much that deems itself as art looks like an accident or a talentless effect doesn’t mean no one can appreciate it.
Art is a matter of intent. But not only the intent of the artist, but anyone who wishes to see or display it as “art”.
So to take one example already talked about here- the elephant making foot paintings. If someone who has access to these paintings decides to see them as art- to take one home to put on the wall, or to sell, then they are art. Regardless of whether the elephant was making considered choices or not- they can still be admired for their asthetics, or just becuase they provoke the viewer to muse on whether the elephent was making choices etc.
Then there’s the beach sign- same rule applies. If you see them as a sovenir, then that’s what it is. If you see it as art, then that’s what it is. The original maker may not have intended it that way, he may just have made a functional sign, but it can still be art, if someone see enough merit in it to view it in that way.
As a sometime painter myself, many’s the time when I’ve looked at my finished painting, then looked at the cloth that I wiped my brushes on whilst making that painting, and realised that the cloth is actually a more interesting piece of art 
It’s the very fact that I made the marks on the piece of cloth unintentionally that make it so interesting.