Abstract or Idealistic: To create any bonsai or piece of art means some degree of abstraction. This simply means going away from the naturalistic appearance. Many people think that abstract means something that one does not recognize anymore. This is not true, it is only a question of degree. Instead of abstraction one could also say idealization. One takes a tree and makes it more ideal, thus making it more beautiful. The question is only how far this goes. The question is also whether it is becoming more beautiful and by what taste.
In the classical style conifers are usually in an abstract style, they look like a natural tree, only more ideal so. The form of the crown is idealized, the trunk and the nebari are perfect and the branch layers are well defined with clean edges.
The abstraction can be brought much further in the contemporary style. This is when the design has given up trying to follow natural forms. Although it is always a living tree it looks like a tree from another planet. The deadwood looks more like a sculpture than natural deadwood. Crowns are styled just to show that the tree is alive. The uniform, small crowns that Kimura often uses, go in this direction.
The ideal tree is the archetype of a tree, or an icon that the viewer recognizes as such. This means that the viewer must have the same or a similar idea of what is ideal to immediately appreciate the bonsai. With classical bonsai the viewer either always had a similar icon in his mind or he has learned to see the classical archetype as ideal.
Contemporary artists are using more and more extreme material to form extreme bonsai. Nowadays the more contorted and fantastic looking, the better. This means that the artists have changed their idea of an ideal tree to an extreme tree. They are looking for the extremely formed material which allows them to do their abstract design.
This is not a totally new development in the history of bonsai, it is only new in the past decades. During the Edo period (1603 – 186
there was a considerable number of fashions for bonsai in twisted of fantastic shapes. These were frowned upon later and today are becoming fashionable again.
Abstract and artificial are not the same. It is not necessary for an abstract bonsai to be created artificially. As long as the tree looks somewhat styled it is abstract. If it looks unreal, not from this world, like a sculpture it is very abstract. Parts of the tree or the whole can well be natural.
Naturally created deadwood that is untouched by any tool can make a bonsai abstract if the appearance is extreme. A trunk that was formed by nature and is contorted and twisted can be material for an outstanding bonsai which is abstract. This is hard to understand, but it has to be remembered that a bonsai is not a replica of a tree but an image, an icon of a tree. It is classically the icon of an ideal tree, which is a “normal”, a “natural” tree. This image can be very close to reality, then the bonsai is naturalistic. The image can be more away from reality and then the bonsai is becoming more and more abstract. At one point the image does not represent a “natural, ideal” tree but an extreme tree - a tree that is so extreme, that it cannot stand as typical anymore.
One can imagine a line which is divided in half. On the left is naturalistic, on the right is abstract. The further one goes on the line to the extreme point one either gets an absolutely naturalistic and on the other extreme an absolutely abstract tree. If someone does the naturalistic style to the extreme, he is taking a shrub and plant it into a pot. On the other extreme, if someone is doing the abstraction to the extreme, he takes a tree in a pot and prunes it in a perfect uneven triangle, like topiary is sometimes practiced. Both extremes will probably not be considered good bonsai. The truth is somewhere in the middle of this line with naturalistic on the left and abstract on the right. A specific bonsai will never be at the extreme end of this line, but somewhere in between. The style that it has depends on whether it is closer to the naturalistic or the abstract extreme. All that counts is the appearance of the bonsai. A quite naturalistic tree often is considered not to be a bonsai but a piece of raw material by the audience. At the same token a quite abstract tree is often considered not to be a bonsai as well, but rather a sculpture. Both creations are on two opposite extremes.
It does not make any difference whether the appearance was created by man or by nature. So it is perfectly valid sometimes to call a bonsai which was put into a pot more or less unaltered, as it was found in nature, an abstract bonsai. On the other hand, a tree that was thoroughly wired and shaped with lots of deadwood that was all created artificially can be a naturalistic bonsai.
Many bonsai enthusiasts have a problem with what they call “excessive” use of deadwood and very contorted shapes. They just don't want to follow the artist to his degree of abstraction. Often it is said that this comes from the lack of exposure to very old wild trees. One can show pictures of natural trees which grow in extreme shapes and even prove that the bonsai in question was more than 95 % shaped by nature the way it appears. This does not help, because the bonsai still is abstract to some extreme, because it does not resemble a typical tree, but an extreme tree. The fact that one has to show to people that such trees really exist somewhere, is proof enough of the abstract nature of the creation. There is no need to prove that an ideal, nicely naturally grown maple, a typical maple, exists.
Pius Notter has pioneered the abstract style in Europe. He has used the natural material that can be found in the Alps in fantastic shapes to create expressionistic abstract bonsai. In the beginning he was accused of not creating images of trees but rather sculptures. This is a typical reaction to a degree of abstraction that the audience does not always want to follow.
Nature does not make abstract trees. Nature can create extremely shaped material that can be called grotesque, dwarfed, contorted or whatever fits. The artist then selects this material and uses it for an artistic tree. Only then it becomes abstract. Even if the artist chooses to not change at all what nature did it can be called abstract if it is part of art.
It is apparent that in contemporary bonsai, extreme trees are becoming more and more fashionable. While a bonsai had to look like a “normal” tree somehow in the classical style, it seems to not matter much anymore. A normal tree is considered a boring tree. Some artists go for the most extreme material to shape fantastic bonsai. Often this is material that would have been considered unfit for bonsai some years ago. A trunk now often cannot have enough twists and kinks. If the deadwood makes a triple summersault it is considered excellent. But then some artists cannot understand why the public does not want to follow them to their degree of abstraction in what they consider outstanding bonsai.
Contemporary artists love quite abstract creations. It is much easier to look like a great artist when styling an extreme bonsai with “artistic” appeal, which is the same really as a high level of abstraction. The creative effort in a more abstract work is usually much more obvious, if only from its deviation from the norm. Still, the trick to success is to obscure these creative efforts so that the gestalt of the tree is what announces it rather than the stylizations. It is in a way a shame that the naturalistic bonsai don't look so artistic and therefore don't appeal to many great bonsai artists.