Best background: Horticulture or Art?

bisco_bonsai

Just wondering what you guys think out there, what in your opinion is most important to bring to the table when starting bonsai: a background in horticulture or a background in art? Asked another way, is it easier to learn the art of bonsai, or to learn the horticulture (techniques) of bonsai. Just a general question which I think will provide some interesting results!
All the best,
JDL

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Craig Cowing

I would say that the only prerequisite is a love of nature and a desire to learn. Out of the two, probably learning basic horticultural techniques first is important--knowing what conditions to keep your trees in, how to get them to survive your first winter, etc. Learning the basics of art comes with time.

Craig Cowing
NY
Zone 5b/6a Sunset 37

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I'm not finished yet, neither are my trees.

Will_Heath

You have to learn to keep them alive first, as it is hard to practice art on dead branches. But, and here's the kicker, you must be ready for that next step once you have mastered the basic horticultural techniques.


Will

BrianBay9

I vote for horticulture. Can't make bonsai art from a dead tree.

Brian

bisco_bonsai

Good post Will, but by a "background in horticulture," I was referring to the knowledge of techniques which can be used in bonsai (grafting, layering, fertilizing, etc.), not simply keeping the tree alive. I think your refering to basic gardening skills. Anyway, let me put it another way, if you were to take on an apprentice to teach, would you rather have someone who knows all the advance horticultural techniques which are commonly used in bonsai and an innate understanding of plant physiology, or would you rather have someone who has graduated from say a great NY art school and could sculpt the heck out of limbs and jin? Is it easier to teach advanced art to a horticulturalist or teach advanced horticulture to an artist? By taking it to this extreme, I think I'll get the answer I'm looking for. It seems to me that a true bonsai artist needs to have a firm grasp on both these elements, but is one harder to learn than the other (in your opinion)? Keep the opinions coming!
All the best,
JDL

cato42

If I may, I'd like to widen the field a bit; I propose that the most important thing to "bring to the table" is patience, followed perhaps very closely by a desire to bring forth from the tree not what one might desire of the tree, but what the tree has as its capacity for showing the beauty, strength, and mystery of nature.

It is obvious that bonsai may not successfully be practiced upon a dead tree--it is the very fact that the tree is living that makes bonsai so powerful an art form. Therefore, working knowledge of arboriculture is necessary. As for the art, well, "if it aint got no 'eart, then it aint got no life, neither", I once heard said, and when it comes to bonsai, this ultimately proves to be true, too.

The easiest path? Why, to decide that bonsai is for the masochists among us and take up bridge.

Best regards,

Cato

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Will_Heath

Simply put, you can teach anyone horticultural techniques but to be an artist takes something more, something unteachable. There is an eye required for creating art, something that can not be taught and can not be learned.

You can teach a student eveything about art, techniques, history, form, etc but all he will have is the knowledge. To create art, it also takes talent.

Very good art can be created without this talent, great art can never be.

I will always choose the person who has knowledge of horticultural techniques over a art school grad simply because this is a living art form in which first you must understand how the tree grows and then and only then can you shape it artistically.


Will

cato42

Sit on the fastball, adjust to the curve.

That, or the answer is. . . .forty-two.

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Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

malhomme

I like the energy created by the question, but it seem to me unnecessary to parse horticulture and art from bonsai. If we are discussing bonsai, it seems to me that neither is complete without the other. Neither-- alone-- is bonsai. Bonsai is art. Not Horticulture or design. No this or that. Just bonsai. But then I observe that my eye is better than my thumb. And I'm back in this whole mess again!

--Jim