Jayde

I love these threads, not to entice argument, but to hear others express their thoughts... It seems to almost draw a political line between enthusiast's and their mentality. If you are more conservative then you are probably going to stick closer to the rules, more liberal then you are going to strike off on your own... There seems to be no apparent swaying of either sides opinion.

If I remember correctly, Didn't Rembrandt have a bunch of students learning how to paint underneath him? These students mass produced pictures that were labeled with the name Rembrandt, and apparently were hard to tell whether or not Rembrandt himself painted the pictures or not? What does that have to do with anything? Well apparently the rules of Rembrandt's styles were so well learned by his students that you can not tell the masters work from the students... Then along comes a guy called Vincent Vangough who had his own style, then Picasso who totally blew things out of the water with Modern Art, even if you don't like Modern Art, you must say he gave things a different look, although in Highschool he would have probably flunked Art class in his day because he didn't do things by normal convention... So hears my point, would we not do well in calling Bonsai that follows the rules to a closer extent Classical Bonsai, and that which breaks the rules for artistic expression Modern Bonsai? That is to say that there is no right or wrong, just adherance to the classical definitions of what Bonsai is, versus what some today are creating through their own artstic expressions? As for myself today I want to learn under Rembrandt, maybe later when I get Bored I will want to go study under Picasso...