Art Is Not To Be Liked

So often when viewing art with friends, I am asked (as a result, I am sure, of their mistaken apperception of me as particularly learned in art) if i 'like' something. I often hem or haw at this question, babbling about some half-conceptualized theory of art or aesthetics. Or just as often, I will shoot off a quick 'yes' or 'of course not!', thinking I'm doing them some service in being an examplar of the quick judgment. Somewhere in this request I have committed the error (as I'm sure some have as well in the asking) of conflating 'liking' something with 'it being good'. This is not always wrong to do, as the salient context of 'do you like it?' can be to mean 'is it any good?'. But the true error resides in my own mashing together of the two.
I have for a long time touted the distinct and sometimes incommunicado places of 'like' and 'good'. This has been a backroom process for most of this time, though I would dredge up the distinction, almost as dichotomous, in conversation, though not in analysis proper.
One must be clear that when judging art, it is not a question of whether one likes it or not, but also that it is not NOT a question of whether one likes it or not. There is some interplay between these, not because what we like informs the quality of art, but as we learn more about the quality of art, it informs what we like. Thus, a properly developed aesthetic sense, developed in a way inexplicable to me, stirs up 'interest' in a piece that acts as a Geiger counter for quality.