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The effect in question is generally referred to as a "ripple dissolve" and is done much in the same way as described with the Craven Backwinder, except it's done in post production on an optical printer. (For reasons of timing and color & density balance, it's not really practical or reliable to do it "in camera" during production.) Basically, is like doing a regular dissolve except that as the first scene (the "outgoing element") fades out, a distorted glass positioned between the optical printer lens and the projector head holding the background image is rotated. This glass has been treated to graduate from clear smooth glass to an increasingly distorted area. Then, after backwinding the flm in the optical camera, the second scene is threaded up in the projector head and as that is faded in, the distortion glass is rotated frame-by-frame until it reaches the clean, un-distorted area, and the rest of the second scene (the "incoming shot") is run until the end of the cut.

There are variations on this methodology, of course, partly depending on the desired effect, and the physical ripple glass can be high-end optical glass or simple, clear Plexiglass previously distorted by heating it with a blow torch (which is something I've done in the past in a pinch). The movement of the glass during the process is usually animated frame-by-frame as the two shots are duped during the dissolve, and can be mounted on a wheel or some other device, or a rectangular piece of glass with distortion increasing progressively over its length can be slid past the lens frame-by-frame while held in a slotted trough of some sort.

If making a custom ripple glass is not possible, one can use regular distorted glass used in windows or other decorative pieces (making sure there is no overt color cast - most common glass has a green tint). Gradually introducing the ripple effect would then require three dissolves: dissolve from the regular scene to "itself," now with the ripple glass moving (thus giving the impression that the ripple effect gradually appears), then dissolve that to the second scene with the ripple effect running, then follow that right away with a dissolve to the second scene "normal" (thus given the impression that the reipple effect fades away).

Anyway, it's a fairly simple effect, though one that can have many variations, lengths, speeds, etc., but it's all done on the optical printer. Titles can be done this way, too: several of Maurice Binder's James Bond main titles utilized ripple title effects (Thunderball and Live and Let Die are two examples). In this case, the backlit title (either as a hi-con Kodaith negative on the animaton stand or as a hi-con 35mm film element on the optical printer), is photographed through a ripple glass and then used as a "burn-in" element on a separate pass (exposure) when the title sequence is composited.

Well, I'm not sure of what you're getting at in distinguishing "cheap" and "art." In the case of ripple dissolves, an "artful" result can be obtained relatively cheaply. It all comes down to the application of the effect, the intention of the scene, etc. Some effects of this type come about purely by accident (which can be frustrating if it happens during preliminary testing and you can't repeat the "accident" when it comes time for the actual composite). But most of the time, creating such effects on an optical printer was desirable precisely because of the control and repeatability one had throughout the process.

Occasionally, of course, there were instances of "organic" or random effects created on the fly. A good example of this is the main title sequence for the John Frankenheimer film Seconds (1966), starring Rock Hudson, in which title designer Saul Bass aimed his camera at flexible Mylar and photographed reflected images that were being projected onto a screen off to the side. By twisting and bending the Mylar during regular photography (i.e., running footage, not frame-by-frame), eerie and most effective distortions were created. But here's a case where a great deal of footage was shot with many variations and "guesses" until enough material was created to use in the sequence. I once tried to replicate this look in an animation/optical configuration but couldn't get it to work (which, of course, may have been just me, but I chocked it up to the differences in methodology, and it was an interesting lesson).

Two of the early James Bond films (with title sequences designed by Robert Brownjohn, not Maurice Binder) are good examples to balance out my previous mention of Bond main titles: From Russia With Love (1963) has titles (hi-contrast slides colored by gels on the slide) projected onto a belly dancer, and Goldfinger (1964) has images of the film projected onto the golden girl (Margaret Nolan in the title sequence). Both effects could never have been done on an optical printer (or, today, digitally) with the same effective results. (Robert Brownjohn remarked once that he got the idea for the above imagery when friends and family were watching home movies one evening and someone happened to walk past the screen through the projecter beam, the images of the movie briefly appearing on the person as he passed by.)

So there are instances where one has to "think outside the box" and utilize more unconventional techniques for more extreme or unusual effects, rather than the bag of tricks offered by an optical printer. But most of the time, transitional dissolves have been done the way I described in my post above.