What makes this Eggleston picture great?

If that's not evocative of a lot of things, you were never a child or a parent in the suburbs of the USA in the '50s or '60s (or, I suppose, the early '70s).

If all you see is a "rusty toy", you're missing an awful lot. It's a racing car, a motorcycle, a space ship, an adventure machine. It's huge and spectacular if you look at it correctly (through the mind of a child); its possibilities completely overwhelm the drab ordinariness of the cookie-cutter "Little Boxes" world in which it actually exists. Those handlebars didn't get to be that way because the tricycle was left out in the rain; those are the scars of experience (probably of a number of children—things were often handed down through families). That trike has been to more places, to more planets, than you can imagine. And that's what it says before you consider loss, whether of a child or of your own childhood.

You're looking at the photograph as a technical execution. Don't. Beyond the basics required for fluent expression, art is not skill; art is content and expression. And yes, sometimes art is of its time—this piece speaks to me colloquially and as a friend in ways it probably cannot speak to you without research and hints.

First, as @rfusca more or less suggested in the comments, much of this answer is fairly general, not really about this particular picture. Second, a lot of it represents more or less the extreme of the cynic's viewpoint. I'm not sure it's ever entirely true -- but I am convinced that some elements have a fair amount of validity too.

I will posit that at least 95% of art critics are basically overeducated morons. They studied art enough to know the names of the schools and the prominent (and often at least a few obscure) members of each -- but they've still done a lot more memorization than understanding.

I will also posit that many are (for various reasons) angry at the world (or more willing than most to take out perfectly ordinary levels of anger on the world), and they use "art" as their way of getting even. Art is the ideal medium for this, because it's all a matter of taste. They proclaim a "piece" to be "high art", and anybody with the nerve to point out that the emperor is naked is obviously a cretin.

To maximize the effectiveness of this tactic, however, what they espouse is primarily mediocre to poor. After all, even ordinary people can admire pictures (sculptures, whatever) that are honestly worth looking at. Anybody can see that a sunset is pretty. Only a true connoisseur can recognize the greatness of a dirty-white canvas with a mostly-black square painted on it, and those who don't stare long enough to notice that the upper, right-hand corner had red under the black are obviously too blind for their opinions to matter at all!

Looking more specifically at this picture, it reminds me quite distinctly of the first few dozen pictures I took after I first got a wide-angle lens (24mm on full frame). Exaggerated perspective is fun for a while. If I had to guess, I'd say this was probably taken when the widest angle most people had was a 28mm, and this is enough wider to be noticeable (probably 20 or 24 mm).

For what it's worth, I think the same general trend continues much more recently -- while I've sold very little stock photography, by far my biggest sellers were ones I took right after I got an 11-18mm lens. I'm pretty sure most of them were simply the first pictures on the market of those particular subjects with that wide of a lens. Quite frankly, I was a bit concerned at the time about submitting those pictures at all -- none of them was (IMO) particularly great either technically or artistically--but they gave a look and viewpoint that was unique at the time, and that was apparently enough.

As a "fine" artist who loves photographs and most other forms of "art", I want to move my viewers and be moved by the work of other artists. This tricycle is so out there, you can't miss it. I like it because it is right in my face. It's humorous. It is important. The composition doesn't bother me. I think the picture needs that little piece of car bumper on the right border. I really like the bold colors of the trike. The piece isn't especially pretty, but its' graphic quality appeals to me. It is a strong piece as far as I'm concerned.

Images are important to us and always serve a purpose. Seeing something like this makes me ask, "Why would anyone do this? "Why not?" seems more to the point, here, because this discussion revolves around whether the term "fine art" (which is an arbitrary definition of one type of art) is applicable to this piece. "Fine" doesn't necessarily mean "good" or "best". There is plenty of "utilitarian" art that is better than quite a lot of fine art. The boundaries between different art-forms often become blurred. Is this important to an artist?

The word, "art", implies skill, whether technical or intuitive. As an artist, I take issue with the idea that "modern art" does not require training or expertise. Good fine art reqiures technique, practice and ability. Inspiration helps. Art is 10% inspiration and 90% hard work for most of us. Good "utilitarian" art requires the same qualities. Great art is "timeless". What does that mean? It moves us greatly and makes us think. We could argue and elaborate on "being moved" and what that means for an eternity.

I suspect you get out of his work what you get out of it. There are no messages, no storylines, no particular agenda. If you think it's worth your time, you look beyond the subject matter at such things as form, framing, angle of view and color. If you must have a subject, it's probably color. For what it's worth, he was influenced by Klee and Kandinsky.

A story about Jackson Pollock: His wife, Lee, was questioning one of his paintings - she goes on about how it isn't cubism and what's the meaning of that line and so on. Finally Pollock says: "I'm just painting, Lee."

That may be how Eggleston shoots - he just takes photographs without much concern about the why behind them. So, ignore the subject and look at color, shapes, and lines to see how they fit together. (I put these notes together over time from newspaper and magazine reviews when I was trying to understand his photographs. I now find some of his work beautiful.)

It's haunting. Who owned loved rode this tricycle ? What came before ? What has been left behind ?

One good thing, definitely: Use of limited ranges of colour throughout the image, and connection/grouping of various subject matter by colour. There is black-ish, beige-greenish-yellow, garish-orange-ish, and not much else in anything that isn't sky (which acts as negative space here, and only connects in one point - the chrome plated car bumper at the very edge, interrupting the framing just slightly and probably extending the negative space mentally).

As art it works, not because of its intrinsic brilliance, but because of whatever the viewer brings to its interpretation.

As a photograph it is moderately interesting and moderately accomplished technically, but it is not $580,000 interesting and/or accomplished.