It also helps that Rogue One just wasn't really that good of a film.
I actually really, really liked The Artist, but I happen to love that era of cinema as well. I do however think where the The Artist had some critical teeth was in the fact that it wasn't just a send-up of some era, but tackled more specifically a radically transitional period in cinema; and then it used that basis to probe the evergreen human preoccupation with nostalgia, pastoralism, and senses of worlds passing us by. So, for me at least, The Artist did a lot to rise above mere pastiche and homage (though it incorporated plenty of both, obviously).