[IBC] Natural style confusion?
Andy Rutledge
Here is my idea on the subject and I'm interested in what you may have to
say on the matter, in general or on specifics. At the request of my
attorney, I'll not answer replies on the list, but only read them. ;-)
One matter that lots of enthusiasts find confusing is the aesthetic
relationship between trees in nature and those in pots for bonsai. The
confusion that arises in this regard often contributes to poor bonsai design
because many growers will allow irrelevancies to interfere with the artistic
work.
It is a fact that trees in the countryside do not often have limb and shoot
structures that upon close inspection resemble anything like the finely
ordered shoot structure often seen in good bonsai work. Many enthusiasts
will take the ideal of nature to an often ill-advised extent and believe
that it is best to let bonsai branch structures grow "naturally" to give the
bonsai an air of naturalness. This is usually a mistake. Good bonsai are
beautiful, like trees in nature, not because they mimic the minutiae of the
natural chaos of full-sized trees, but because they capture the overall
natural elegance by way of a very controlled and exacting order to the
structures.
One must be conscious of the scale involved. For instance, if you stand
across the room from a large, impressionistic painting done by a master of
impressionism, the beauty and order of the work is clear despite the almost
randomness and abandon with which the paint was applied to the canvas.
However, if you approach the painting and examine a 10cm X 10cm square of
the canvas quite closely, it is just so much chaos. Also, if you were to
create a 10cm X 10cm painting, your technique would have to be far more
"clean" than that used in the creation of the larger painting in order to
achieve a similar effect.
Likewise, when you look at a 20m tall tree, regardless of the tangle of
branches and the poor structural details, you probably perceive a graceful
image of a specimen tree. However, if you attempt to re-create that image on
a less than 5% scale (less than 1m tall) with a potted tree by using the
same poor structural elements and chaotic tangle of shoots, you will not
succeed in recreating the image of the stately tree in nature. You will only
succeed in making a poorly formed bonsai. Don't be tricked into ignoring the
fact that bonsai is an artistic endeavor and succeeds by artistic means.
I think that it is clear that the grace and beauty that trees in nature can
convey is with bonsai achieved only in the details - orderly details. This
is what I believe must be kept in mind when developing the main branching
and the details of ramification on bonsai, especially with deciduous bonsai
because when the leaves are gone in winter, the emperor will have no clothes
and all of the details, good and bad, will be painfully visible.
Kind regards,
Andy Rutledge
zone 8, Texas
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Reiner Goebel
> One matter that lots of enthusiasts find confusing is the aesthetic
> relationship between trees in nature and those in pots for bonsai. The
> confusion that arises in this regard often contributes to poor bonsai design
> because many growers will allow irrelevancies to interfere with the artistic
> work.
snip
A seminal post if I ever read one. I hope it didn't pass right over
Walter's head. ;-)
Reiner Goebel
Toronto, Canada