But, if we were to engage your argument here, about a "top down" appreciation of art, yes, I still hold that some things are objectively beautiful and some things are objectively ugly.

And one thing that this is inherently connected to is that of one's objective moral judgments in general.  Objective moral truth flows from the ability to make basic objective aesthetic statements.  If everything "is in the eye of the beholder" than nothing is real and its a small, short intellectual progression into postmodernism.  That's not a center-right idea, and not part of the intellectual heritage we espouse.