FredL

Carl, I'm kind of sorry about my silliness on your thead. You've raised a serious issue and I think I should have treated it more seriously. I do like to have fun when I talk to friends and, I guess like everybody else on this very new medium, am still feeling my way along. Posting comments on internet forums is not really quite the same thing as a chat with friends, but I, for one, still can't figure out exactly what it is and how to have fun with it without offending anybody.

To me, it seems like Bonsai is quite unlike other artistic media in that the material the artist is working with is ALIVE. This introduces a profound difference into the process and the results of the artist's efforts. The thing is, the trees we are working with has their own agenda, entirely separate and apart from the artist's. To me, recognition of this introduces a sort of respect for the tree itself that does not exist in other forms of art, where the artist is trying simply to express a personal vision thru inanimate materials. I don't for example, ever recall a painter or sculpter expressing a desire to express the character of his materials in the way many bonsai artists talk about what they are doing. At least, Eastern (Japanese) bonsai artists.

Now I don't want to get into the whole silliness about whether Bonsai is cruel to the trees. Even if there was anything to this notion, this particular idea is not likely to get very far in this venue! So, that's not what I'm talking about.

What I am talking about is the sort of instinctive reverence most of us feel for the magnificance of the natural world and the sort of nostalgia that many of us feel for a life spent closer to that world and the feelings that it evokes in us. In my life, I still remember the intense feelings of loss that I felt when, around the age of 27, I committed to the world of business, an urban life and giving up a life spent close to nature.

Now, to be honest, I don't entirely understand the vocabulary you are using to describe the ideas you have introduced, but I do understand the gap between urban intellectuals and those whose lives are focused primarily on the natural world. These latter folks, no matter how brilliant and how knowledgable of the world that interests them they are, they are, of course, looked down on by urban intellectuals. Yet, I think this is the mentality that Bonsai springs from and that it is a rather recent development that Bonsai is coming to be significantly influenced and explained by urban intellectuals.

Bonsai is certainly appropriately looked upon as an art form, but is a profoundly different form of art than those using inanimate materials. As such, it is pretty much unsuited for the social commentary so beloved by urban intellectuals. It speaks to a different place in the heart than those so empasized by that particular crowd. It has little relevance to the problems of society, which I think is the subject matter of Art Irony.

Myself, I see the spirit of Bonsai more akin to the spirit which created and maintains Glacier National Park than the spirit of, say, Picasso.

Fred