I disagree with the assertion that art is subjective. Art - in my opinion - can be defined as something expressive made through the love and passion of its creator and which is a reflection of its creator. The argument that art is subjective comes from the assumption that what makes something art or not is how it’s interpreted, which I vehemently disagree with. I am very much opposed to the individualist thinking behind “Death of the Author” and similar ideas. Art has meaning to it; it’s given a purpose by the person making it. It exists for a reason and has a reason to exist.
The artists can appreciate their art but it is in that engagement that transforms it into art. If somebody who is not the creator appreciates something as art does it cease to be art because the artist has decided what they produced did have not love or had passion in it? If "death of the author" could have an individualist take then what does collective interpretation of a creation, even against the artist's intention, do? Could that collectivist action nullify the individualist interpretation (of death of the author)?
Art is a relationship of the consumer (insert better term there) and the creation - that relation is real but is borne out of the material conditions of the class society as it stands today. The art of the artist does not exist in a vacuum and it is this relation to the world that dismantles any invidualist take of what is an artist and what is art. The objectivity is in that real relationship.
I would strongly recommend Georges Politzer's Elementary Philosophy, not necessarily to convince you of dialectical materialism but at least understand convincingly what it is about. One understands relations but has an objective reality. It is not positivist.
Death of the Author does not negate the love and passion to create art but to understand why one must understand how one sublimates individualist takes without resorting to reaction; dialectical materialism is how one sublimates this - it is very much a collectivist understanding.