Bonsai and Art

fredtruck said:
If you make your own rules, this won’t happen, but at the same time, you may find your opportunities to participate in bonsai shows limited. If you make the choice to combine Western traditions with Asian bonsai and make your own rules that most likely will become your main source of satisfaction. At least you did it your way.
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I was kind of disappointed with this last paragraph. Especially, that last sentence. With an ending like this the previous four pages was an exercise in typing.
 
>>With an ending like this the previous four pages was an exercise in typing.

It depends on how you read it. You can expect success if your work is quality, but things in art move really slow. When I started out in the early 70s, older artists warned me about this. I had no idea what I was in for. Things my friends and I did in the mid-eighties are just now being written about and appearing in advanced studies syllabi. Most people think success is like the Beatles or Jackson Pollock. Do a little work and zow--the money's there. If there's any money there, it's because you worked at another job to earn it and still managed to keep doing art. It is disappointing. But you get over it quick if you're in art for the long haul. Every artist I have known and come to admire is a long-term survivor.
 
Lol I love how people think bonsai is purely Japanese.....technically Chinese, then Korean then Japanese. Art yes, considering most people cant even keep flowers alive in a pot.
In Korea it is considered art and rightfully so. Living art where the creator and the creation dance in a ballet of life and death.
Saying that one must be taught to be an artist must mean that Di Vinci and Van Gogh are not qualified...lol burn those paintings. That's just my two cents worth.
 
MichaelS said:
Most bonsai (I mean very vast majority world wide) could not be regarded as being works of art any more than if I copied the Mona Lisa and called it art.
Of the ones that are left, the truly good pieces would be even more difficult to find.
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Would have to disagree... even though I am not quite sure if you are stating it is your own opinion that some Bonsai are better than others, and the one's you would perhaps view as not so good, not really being Art compared to the one's that are... Or, if you are suggesting that often folks look to examples of other trees and borrow or perhaps copy ideas from them to design their own trees?

Either way I would disagree on both accounts...

It is not a requirement that Art be good. I think we would all agree that it would be nice if it was... but, then one would have to argue what then is good Art? As we all know everyone has different tastes, experiences, views, etc. So, even if the Art may be viewed by some as being good, there are probably going to be just as many who don't appreciate it as well...

Some Art my be done by masters who with a quick glance one would be able to recognize how very talented they are at what they do, seeing you brought up the Mona Lisa, I would say then like replicating the human form... where not only is the proportions correct, but so is the perspective, the color, the shading, etc. Then there are painters like the folk artists of the south, who without any formal training painted images of people where none of the proportions, perspective, color, etc. is even slightly correct... it often so far off that it looks like a first grader painted it. Yet, these works of art, now fill most of the museums in New York, sell at Sotheby’s, and are all the rave, some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To the second point... every artist that has ever been, no matter what type of art is is that they do, has always borrowed from somewhere. Whether it is from nature, a street scene, a still life of some fruit, from a person's looks, as in the Mona Lisa, (seeing that he was merely replicating her image), or most importantly from another artist.

Even if you are a musician, you borrow from some sound you hear. As, John Lennon said, there is nothing new under the sun... But, you do it in such a way that you then put your own little spin on it, and make it your own. There is nothing wrong with this as long as your own identity, your own views, feelings and emotions come through.

Why? Because, if one is observing your music, your painting, your Bonsai, and there is not your identity attached... the the end product just fall flat, and lacks any emotions, or feelings. It becomes a second hand rip off, that clearly shows... a lot like watching some boring cover band at a local bar, where when they finally do take a break... people applaud not because they are good, but because they finally shut the hell up! Then the next band gets up, plays the very same songs, makes them their own and rocks it!
 
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MichaelS said:
Explain why
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Copying the Mona Lisa is a reproduction. It's possible to make a copy that looks very much like the original. With the computer graphics, it could get very close. Some forgers, I'm sure, could make a copy that most of us would be unable to discern it's not the original.

Each bonsai is unique. Each tree will have different genetics, fertilizer, exposure to sun, etc.

John Naka made a famous forest bonsai named "Goshin". After he created it, everybody wanted one. John made several for clients, and other artists made their version of it, too. Even Smoke has one in his back yard. While many of the "copies" have the same look and feel as the original, none are an exact replica. Impossible to do. And, who knows? One or two of the replicas might actually be a better forest than the original "Goshin"!
 
sawgrass said:
Would have to disagree... even though I am not quite sure if you are stating it is your own opinion that some Bonsai are better than others, and the one's you would perhaps view as not so good, not really being Art compared to the one's that are... Or, if you are suggesting that often folks look to examples of other trees and borrow or perhaps copy ideas from them to design their own trees?
Click to expand...

Surely a true work of art must be (among other things) an original product of the mind of the creator. Example, If we go by your definition, I could say make a copy a beautiful sculpture of something I saw and perhaps change a few features and call it my own creation. It's fine to borrow technique and draw inspiration from other works and then go and really create something with those tools but in actuality, what bonsai practitioners do is use second or even tenth hand ideas to make (not create) another one. This is not art. This is craft. You cannot in my mind use someone else's mind to create. Simply saying that all bonsai are unique is not good enough. Bonsai are unique not by design but because they are living things and actually grow independently of our manipulation Of course this craft is just as valid and in many cases just as valuable as art but it's not art. Replication is not art.
True art is the creation of form (line and or colour or sound) not replication of form. And to be good art, this form must be of a quality which deeply moves the viewer. But not just any viewer, someone who is capable of understanding it (just as say Stravinsky understands music as opposed to the way I do or Keith Jarret understands jazz as opposed to the way someone strumming a guitar for the first time)
I would have to look long and hard to come up with a bonsai specimen which I could happily call a piece of art. Also very true that art is not necessarily good. I would venture to say than most is not.


Even if you are a musician, you borrow from some sound you hear. As, John Lennon said, there is nothing new under the sun... But, you do it in such a way that you then put your own little spin on it, and make it your own. There is nothing wrong with this as long as your own identity, your own views, feelings and emotions come through.
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Correct, but firstly, that of course does not make it good and secondly that does not apply to most bonsai as the views, feelings and emotions of the people who make them are usually not coming through, they are just borrowed. (if that)
Imagine if as many people who do bonsai started making music by using inspiration from John Lennon overnight. Would you call it art? I don't think so. You would most likely call it a fad.
 
Adair M said:
Copying the Mona Lisa is a reproduction. It's possible to make a copy that looks very much like the original. With the computer graphics, it could get very close. Some forgers, I'm sure, could make a copy that most of us would be unable to discern it's not the original.

Each bonsai is unique. Each tree will have different genetics, fertilizer, exposure to sun, etc.

John Naka made a famous forest bonsai named "Goshin". After he created it, everybody wanted one. John made several for clients, and other artists made their version of it, too. Even Smoke has one in his back yard. While many of the "copies" have the same look and feel as the original, none are an exact replica. Impossible to do. And, who knows? One or two of the replicas might actually be a better forest than the original "Goshin"!
Click to expand...
Yes but only Naka's is art. (I reserve my judgment as to whether it is good)
 
MichaelS said:
Surely a true work of art must be (among other things) an original product of the mind of the creator. Example, If we go by your definition, I could say make a copy a beautiful sculpture of something I saw and perhaps change a few features and call it my own creation.
Click to expand...
Sorry to burst bubbles here, but this is what is done all the time in Art... You mentioned Leonardo, and his portrait of the Mona Lisa, yet if one actually studies the work of Leonardo they would quickly come to the realization that he and his work did not exist in a a vacuum, or a bubble, that he, just as every artist is a product of his or her environment. Of which their work is often reflective of their time. It was stated earlier here by another member here that Leonardo had no formal training... this is incorrect, of course he did, his uncle paid a substantial amount of funds to ship him to Florence to study under one of the premier Artist of the time, Andrea del Verrocchio, because at an early age he realized the potential of Leonardo. His teacher's work is very much reflected in Leonardo ' s work. He later held a position on the court of the highest family in the land, so he was totally surrounded by all of the great artist if the time, both in Italy and abroad... and in fact most would argue that it was this close relationship, that actually kept him alive... Seeing that not only did he cut open cadavers, which at that time would of been Witchcraft and instant hanging, or worse... but he was also an open homosexual.

If you examine the Mona Lisa and compare it to other works by Leonardo, as well as other works, by other artists of his time you will note and clearly see the similarities of his progression towards him painting the Mona Lisa, reflected in his various versions of the Virgin Mary, mother with child...

Now, perhaps Leonardo used the Mona Lisa ' s likeness as a subject of inspiration for these earlier works? He knew her, and it is reported that perhaps they were related... yet it still does not change the fact that at least 4 or 5 paintings that we know of, done by Leonardo, bare the same striking resemblance... so, Leonardo ' s creations were not individual pieces of one of art, but instead a cumulative group of one idea. He, had borrowed, and copied his own ideas..

This is very common practice for an artist to do... Picasso had his blue period, Monet his Ariel water landscape paintings, Lautrec his dancing bimbos...

Now, to take it a step further... you will also find that this same similar likeness of the Virgin Mary, was duplicated by any number of Artist of the time... How many paintings of Jesus all look the same? And in fact, I have seen images of mosaic done in Ottoman temples, done centuries before Leonardo, that hold a striking resemblance to his paintings if both the Mona Lisa and the Virgin Mary. So, who then is doing the Art, and who the craft?

Or, does this have more to do with a collective consciousness, of an understanding of how a certain way something should be portrayed?

Take Bonsai...
For me at least, I think there are probably very few folks who sit down with a picture of a tree done by some famous artist and try and copy the exact tree. I would argue instead, that is more the common understanding of what a bonsai most feel is supposed to look like, that generates year after year, similar looking trees, like the portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I don't think many would call Leonardo a "crafter"... yet, his paintings fall in line with how Mary supposedly looked. How, many folks actually knew what Jesus or Mary looked like?

I think it is incorrect to state that because one duplicates a common understanding of how a bonsai should perhaps look, that they are copiers, and crafters... Instead, I would suggest more that they are merely abiding by the norms of their society, just a Leonardo did with his paintings... he did not go out on some limb and paint some far out image of the Virgin Mary, that was totally his own.
 
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MichaelS said:
Surely a true work of art must be (among other things) an original product of the mind of the creator. Example, If we go by your definition, I could say make a copy a beautiful sculpture of something I saw and perhaps change a few features and call it my own creation. It's fine to borrow technique and draw inspiration from other works and then go and really create something with those tools but in actuality, what bonsai practitioners do is use second or even tenth hand ideas to make (not create) another one. This is not art. This is craft. You cannot in my mind use someone else's mind to create. Simply saying that all bonsai are unique is not good enough. Bonsai are unique not by design but because they are living things and actually grow independently of our manipulation Of course this craft is just as valid and in many cases just as valuable as art but it's not art. Replication is not art.
True art is the creation of form (line and or colour or sound) not replication of form. And to be good art, this form must be of a quality which deeply moves the viewer. But not just any viewer, someone who is capable of understanding it (just as say Stravinsky understands music as opposed to the way I do or Keith Jarret understands jazz as opposed to the way someone strumming a guitar for the first time)
I would have to look long and hard to come up with a bonsai specimen which I could happily call a piece of art. Also very true that art is not necessarily good. I would venture to say than most is not.




Correct, but firstly, that of course does not make it good and secondly that does not apply to most bonsai as the views, feelings and emotions of the people who make them are usually not coming through, they are just borrowed. (if that)
Imagine if as many people who do bonsai started making music by using inspiration from John Lennon overnight. Would you call it art? I don't think so. You would most likely call it a fad.
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So, by your line of reasoning, a Classical Muscian is not an artist. He's merely playing the notes created by the composer.

Hmmm.... I think I'll ask Yo Yo Ma his opinion of that concept!
 
Adair M said:
So, by your line of reasoning, a Classical Muscian is not an artist. He's merely playing the notes created by the composer.
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Correct. The true artist (in this particular sense, was the composer) I think the word art and artist has become so diluted now that anyone who picks up a guitar, or a brush or a hammer and chisel or anyone in front of a microphone is automatically an artist. To some maybe they are but not to me. How does picking up a sheet of someone else's music and playing it make you an artist? If I read Shakespeare's words I am an artist? Of course not. You may be called a musician, a virtuoso, even a master, but surely not an artist. The art is the music, not the playing of it. Where is the line drawn? Or are basket weavers, or crafters of fine axes now artists? If they are, well then hell everybody is an artist! The cup of coffee I make is similar to most but unique in flavour. I'm an artist!
 
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I think it is incorrect to state that because one duplicates a common understanding of how a bonsai should perhaps look, that they are copiers, and crafters... Instead, I would suggest more that they are merely abiding by the norms of their society, just a Leonardo did with his paintings... he did not go out on some limb and paint some far out image of the Virgin Mary, that was totally his own.
Click to expand...

Yes but no doubt he was ABLE to go out on a limb. He may have been constrained by the prejudices of his society of the time, but he had the capacity to do anything. I am not doubting there are bonsai practitioners out there who have the same capacities. There must be. What I am proposing is that close to 100% of the offerings we see should not be called art. Some are supremely beautiful visual masterpieces of craft without doubt. Just because a branch is different here or there, or I choose a different pot, does not make it art in my mind. I know deep down that I have not really created anything, just copied what I have seen and admired. I think I'm doing that pretty well in some cases and I get endless pleasure and satisfaction from doing that but I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm not really doing art. I hope to one day but I'm not so sure it will happen.
You mentioned Picasso and Monet. I believe they used borrowed technique to create where as we are using borrowed technique to reproduce.
I think maybe we are getting confused by the fact that every bonsai piece is unique and somehow believing that is good enough to qualify it as being art.
Well there are no to things in the universe that are not unique so that can't in itself be enough. There must be something else to separate true art from craft.
 
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fredtruck said:
>>With an ending like this the previous four pages was an exercise in typing.

It depends on how you read it. You can expect success if your work is quality, but things in art move really slow. When I started out in the early 70s, older artists warned me about this. I had no idea what I was in for. Things my friends and I did in the mid-eighties are just now being written about and appearing in advanced studies syllabi. Most people think success is like the Beatles or Jackson Pollock. Do a little work and zow--the money's there. If there's any money there, it's because you worked at another job to earn it and still managed to keep doing art. It is disappointing. But you get over it quick if you're in art for the long haul. Every artist I have known and come to admire is a long-term survivor.
Click to expand...
Wow all over the place with this post.

So your saying artistry in bonsai and doing it for a long time is mutually inclusive. Meaning, I been doing it for 33 years , does that make me an artist?

What does success and artistry have to do with each other? What negates success, and who is the arbiter?

So the Beatles were successful because they made some money but not artists? Are you kidding me?

Art and success is subjective and not the property of the doer, but the property of the enjoyer. There are plenty of people doing bonsai right here on this forum over long periods of time and are no where near artists standards, me included. I have been in it for the long haul, but that means nothing. Real artists are talented and that has no bearing on time. Talented people with money can have superior collections in a few years while, those less fortunate can work for decades and still have Home Depot bonsai.
 
MichaelS said:
Yes but no doubt he was ABLE to go out on a limb. He may have been constrained by the prejudices of his society of the time, but he had the capacity to do anything. I am not doubting there are bonsai practitioners out there who have the same capacities. There must be. What I am proposing is that close to 100% of the offerings we see should not be called art. Some are supremely beautiful visual masterpieces of craft without doubt. Just because a branch is different here or there, or I choose a different pot, does not make it art in my mind. I know deep down that I have not really created anything, just copied what I have seen and admired. I think I'm doing that pretty well in some cases and I get endless pleasure and satisfaction from doing that but I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm not really doing art. I hope to one day but I'm not so sure it will happen.
You mentioned Picasso and Monet. I believe they used borrowed technique to create where as we are using borrowed technique to reproduce.
I think maybe we are getting confused by the fact that every bonsai piece is unique and somehow believing that is good enough to qualify it as being art.
Well there are no to things in the universe that are not unique so that can't in itself be enough. There must be something else to separate true art from craft.
Click to expand...
We are running round in circles here... and I don't think there will be any actual resolution, so I will just say that when I sit down to paint a painting I do so as an Artist. I seek to tell a story... "My story", of how I view the world and objects in the world. I pull inspiration from all the experiences and things I have seen in Life. Some good, some bad, some just bat shit crazy! I have done substantial amounts of traveling in my life, have seen a lot of things, so I reference these images as well. Love history, as well as learning about other cultures and their customs, as well and love to people watch. All of this goes into the mix... If the day I sit down to paint I am pissed off, it shows I'm sure as I work out my frustration, in what I lay down with my brushes... If I am having a good day... often the brushes fly and my wife has to tell me it's 4 in the morning, that I should come to bed. If she didn't... I would probably fall asleep with them in my hand. Everyday, the same routine... has been my entire life, and to be honest, couldn't picture a life without it. Would not want it any other way... Now, when I sit down to work on a piece of Bonsai Material I do the exact same thing... only with wire and scissors. No difference... other than now I am sculpting.
 
If I am an artist for doing Bonsai..

A fartist would be fertilizing with gas.

A tartist grows Crabapples exclusively.

A wartist finds toads nesting in their pots.

And I make wigs out of cats and sell them to Trump.

Finally.....something worth reading! Eh?

Sorce
 
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