Bonsaial said:
It requires just as many of the same skills and just as much experience to keep up something already good as it does to get a piece of un-styled material to the same point.
I replied:
Well I for one like to think this is not true and even a bid unlogical. But hey....that's just my professional opinion!
Hans.
I know it was a short answer, but is was very late! So let me try to explain using your own examples.
Bonsaial :
The Internet forum is a great place to showcase the abilities of a tree over time. Unlike a contest, which takes a crappy piece of material and accentuates it to a crappier piece of material, a purchased piece of stock can be showed to develop over a period of years thus showcasing the artists abilities. I am saddened that over a period of 6 years this forum is not able to produce trees that are more finished. That is a huge amount of time to not have at least two or three hundred trees of show quality to present on a yearly basis and see how each has improved.
Hans:
Al, isn't the above proof that to make or keep a good bonsai, U need a bid more than experience and skills. And U are only revering here, to show quality bonsai. What about real top bonsai?
Bonsaial said
:
In my searches over the Internet is seems that this stigma of “doing it yourself” seems to be concentrated in the USA. It surely is not born of Europe or Japan, two nations that buy and sell stock between artists quite freely and have no trouble showing this “borrowed” material in the latest exhibit.
Hans:
Although it might seams to be this way in Europe to most people in the US, it those not mean that all of the people over here with good bonsai or pros agree or approve with this aprouge to bonsai. And it those surtenly not mean we don't know the difference between a originally styled or prefab bonsai. The necessity for buying good material, to create good bonsai is almost becoming a myth, that is kept alive by people that practise bonsai themselves this way, or by the fenders that need to make there living from these imported trees. Our aim should be to learn how to create a bonsai, not how to buy a prefab one and then maintain it. I for one, am in favor of dividing showed top bonsai in at least 2 different sections. The Japanese imported bonsai or in traditional Japanese styled bonsai, and the free styled Yamadori bonsai. It is up to the bonsai artist to desite were he wants his tree to be showed. Than it is up to the public or judges to decide if they go for that all important tree (that I'm constantly reminded of here), rather than looking at the talent of the artist, even if it is a pre fab imported bonsai that is bought some times even just a few months earlier, or go for the bonsai that was styled from scratch, over the course of many years. The first one i mentioned will most likely win (that's why they are bought in the first place). But I decided a long time ago that as a artist I rather belong into the later category! And with me there are many others who feel this way. If you keep on telling people that bonsai art is all about showing the best possible tree, no matter what. We will be having this same conversation in 6 years time. If you teach people how to recognize a bonsai and how to make the best possible one out of any kind of material, they can later on in there bonsai live decide for themselves to which category the want to belong or go with both ways. Don't tel me that Bonsai is the only art form were only the end result counts, don't kill creativity or suffocate talent with old believes or hollow oriental frases. Restyling is not the same as styling, no matter what they try to make you believe.
regards,
hans.