Is it Japanese or Chinese

rockm

"Actually I was trying to prove a point to show that not all Penjing are realistic and that the comment about them being so was to broad of a stroke to offer a real definition."

Point take and a good observation. I'd say bonsai tend to be more realistic and penjing tend to be more SURrealistic...

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hansvanmeer

Hi Cord,

Why not make it more interesting?
Chinese vs. Japanese vs. non oriental bonsai ?
Hans.

mike_p

Hi Hans
I think you may have, to steal a quote from another bonsai site, "thrown a cat in amongst the pigeons".

Mike

P.S. May we change "non-oriental bonsai" to "international fusion bonsai"?

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Cordon

really all I'm trying to find out is what connotes chinese styling vs. japanese styling. I often hear of trees described as chinese or japanese, but I really know little about what actually what makes that style other than nationality of the artist, or origin of the particular tree.

Hans,

if you'd like to chime in and descride what would make a tree "non-oriental' in its styling by all means explain. I'm just curious about what criteria can be used to make these derivations.

hansvanmeer

Yes off course you may! Although i don't like the sound off "fusion".
Or call them non Chinese or Japanese bonsai!
I hope i did not sound disrespectful or anything with what i wrote? I never meant to trow a cat anywhere! I love cats! I even like pigeons!
But seriously, lets trough international bonsai in to the comparison! I am a fusionist and i feel left out!
Hans.

hansvanmeer

Hi Cordon,
I know i was just joking around!
I don't know to much about penjin, i know a little bid about Japanese bonsai!
I do know that even with in China there are many styles off penjin and bonsai, the same as in Japan.
I do find that the Chinese bonsai are often more impressionistic than the Japanese bonsai. Japanese bonsai are more minimalistic and more bound to stricter rules and styles. Although in Japan there are more and more artist that are breaking free from those style restrictions!
Hans.

Cordon

so basically what I'm hearing is...

pensai/penjing = more impressionistic/ free form

Bonsai = minimalistic, structured

triotary

Adapted from http://www.venuscomm.com/Penjingdef.html

1. WHAT IS PENJING?


Penjing is the Chinese art of creating a miniature landscape in a container. The word consists of the two characters shown on the left: "pen" - "pot" or "container", and "jing" - "scenery". An artist may use plant material and natural stone to portray an idylllic mountain retreat with a murmuring brook or a waterscape with a lush tropical island. Or he or she may design a much simpler scene where one single tree makes up the entire composition.


Penjing and bonsai are closely related art forms. Penjing is the older form from which bonsai derived. While the similarities by far outweigh the differences, there is a significant variance in scope: "Bonsai" literally means a "tree in a pot" and therefore as an art form, bonsai is more narrowly defined than penjing, a "landscape in a pot". Many of the beautiful, elaborate tray sceneries created by Chinese artists clearly defy the parameters of bonsai.

While penjing can be found in many variations, the Chinese themselves recognize three distinct categories:

Tree Penjing (shumu penjing)
Landscape Penjing (shanshui penjing)
Water-and-Land Penjing (shuihan penjing)




2. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT


Penjing as an art form spans over a thousand years. Our earliest historical records of a stone and a plant arranged in a container to form an artistic scenery date from the Tang Dynasty (618-907). By the Song Dynasty (960-1279 ), the Chinese already practiced the art at an advanced artistic level. Paintings from that period depict pieces that would be prized among seasoned collectors today.


Penjing artists have drawn much of their inspiration not only from nature, but from nature poetry and landscape painting. Similar aesthetic considerations have guided all three art forms. With landscape painting attaining unprecedented heights during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), penjing, too, was poised for vigorous artistic development. By the early years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the art had become very popular, and the first manuals appeared. With increasing popularity, however, more commercial, folkloristic, and regionally defined strands of penjing sprang up alongside the more sophisticated, artistic forms. In addition to aesthetically refined penjing, one could find trees styled by representatives of regional schools where trunks had been coiled to represent dragons or whose canopies were to depict cloud layers, or trees shaped to resemble the strokes of fortuitous characters. The variations were endless. However, this should not concern us too much. Any art has the potential for decline and degeneration. We should focus our interest on the way the art has been practiced at the highest level. In traditional China, penjing in its finest form was an art of the scholar, just like poetry, calligraphy, brush painting, and garden art.


In the later years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the 19th century, foreign aggression and domination led to a decline in penjing, and this development was exacerbated during the years of foreign occupation and humiliation, war, civil war, and revolutions that China experienced during much of the 20th century. Old collections were lost, artists struggled to survive and to pass on their wisdom and insights. Only in the last twenty-plus years have the conditions in China allowed for a renaissance of this ancient art form. Today, a quickly growing number of enthusiasts and collectors have discovered their own roots in penjing.


It is assumed that the art of creating miniature trees reached Japan by the 13th century. The exact time during which penjing reached Japanese shores is not known. In the 6th and 7th centuries, Japan sent envoys to China to study her arts and architecture, her language, literature and philosophy as well as her legal system. A second massive importation of Chinese culture and arts occurred during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 ). Chan, a form of Buddhism in which the original Indian teachings blended with Daoism (Taoism), a native Chinese philosophy, was introduced to Japan during that time and given the name "Zen" - the name by which it is known in the West today. The vast cultural transmission begun in the the 1200's would last for centuries as Japanese artists continued looking to China for guidance and inspiration and freely "borrowed" ideas, themes, motifs, as well as technical and horticultural knowledge.


3. AESTHETICS

The penjing artist's goal is not only to re-create a natural scenery in a container, but to capture its essence and spirit. To achieve this objective, a wide palette of artistic devices comes into play.


Like a Chinese landscape painting, a penjing is a study in contrasts. On a philosophical level, this presentation of opposites is evidence of the Chinese artist's conceptualization of the universe as being governed by two poles of cosmic energy, the yin and the yang. Artistically, the contrasts create rhythm and dramatic tension which then is resolved in a dynamic balance, a delicately tuned equilibrium.


The attainment of overall structural unity is critical, especially in a more complex composition like a water-and-land penjing where design elements such as trees, rocks, mosses, small grasses, and water all need to harmonize with each other and contribute to the design in a meaningful fashion. Careful selection is critical. In addition to deciding on a container and determining the tentative placement of the composition, the artist will consider the tree species, number of trees to be used, their sizes, trunk angles and the density of their foliage mass. He or she will choose rocks for their size, color, shape, surface details, and compatibility with the trees. In the end, each and every element in the design needs to relate to all the others so that the entire landscape appears as an all-embracing, encompassing entity.


Penjing artists do not seek to create perfection. As a matter of fact, trees trained into highly stylized forms where every angle and every root and branch placement has been meticulously calculated by a rigid formula do not suit their tastes. Apart from being beautiful, an outstanding penjing must look entirely natural. It should look as if Nature herself had spontaneously created it - like a marvellous accident of Nature.



4. SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND


Bonsai and penjing may be viewed as objects of meditation. The act of creating bonsai or penjing by itself is a contemplative, meditative exercise - a practice of Zen. The little trees and miniature landscapes can be seen as a celebration of Nature and the healing powers extended by an intact natural environment. Creating and taking care of bonsai and penjing will draw you closer to Nature, enabling you to experience her in a more direct, intimate way.


For a more in-depth understanding of bonsai and penjing, the practice of creating miniature trees and landscapes should be viewed against the backdrop of two of China's great philosophical traditions, Daoism (Taoism) and Zen Buddhism. Daoism has exerted a profound influence over Far Eastern arts for over two thousand years. It's a way of thinking and living that can liberate mind and body. Daoism proposes the return to a state of original spontaneity by discarding the rules of rigid conventional behavior and thinking. It suggests that by learning to go with the flow and allowing our minds to function naturally, tremendous creative power can be unleashed. Tuning into the rhythm of Nature and understanding the interrelatedness of all things around us are key components of Daoist teachings.


Zen Buddhism evolved as a new strand of Buddhism with unique Chinese features. After Indian monks had introduced the teachings of Buddha in China about two thousand years ago, the sutras were translated and interpreted by Chinese practitioners of the Dao (Tao). This resulted in a highly Sinicized form of Buddhism that retained many important elements of Daoism. Chinese-style sitting meditation ("zuo chan" in Chinese and "za zen" in Japanese) does not seek to bring the mind under rigid control as does traditional Indian Buddhism, but instead seeks to liberate, encouraging the mind to flow without impediment and to follow its own, intrinsically good, nature. Chan, popularized in the West under its Japanese name, Zen, teaches that the receptive mind can find enlightenment everywhere, at any time, in the form of "sudden awakening".


And so it is that a bonsai or penjing artist, working with natural materials and concentrating moment to moment, may come upon sudden insights, inspirations, and resolutions. This is the creative process. It finds the artist quietly absorbed in a state of active meditation. Arranging trees and placing rocks, he suddenly discovers something new, not pre-meditated - a composition that flows naturally and harmoniously, engendering great beauty and revealing universal, eternal truths with seemingly little effort.

triotary

And this is from Amazon reader's review on Qingquan 'Brook' Zhao's book called:
Penjing: Worlds of Wonderment: A Journey Exploring an Ancient Chinese Art and Its History, Cultural Background, and Aesthetics

It is little known fact that the Chinese and not the Japanese invented "Bonsai" which in China is called Penjing. With a rich history dating back over 2000 years Penjing is one of China's most esteemed traditional art forms, along with Gongshi (scholar's rocks) and landscape gardens amongst others. It is an art form steeped in poetry and philosophy, a form of art borne of a deep and mystical love of the Chinese landscape. Long the exclusive domain of the literati and scholar classes, bureaucrats, monks and the aristocracy, Penjing sadly fell out of favour in its homeland during the tumultuous last quarter of the 19th century. As with much Chinese art and architecture of the period many prime and irreplaceable examples were tragically destroyed, by the beginning of the early 20th century it was a little known and practised art form, and it had languished that way in almost total obscurity for much of that century.

Thus in the West the limelight has mainly been focused - almost exclusively - on its younger and more famous Japanese cousin Bonsai. This is understandable since most western artists working in the field have been trained in the art of Bonsai and most if not all English language books, journals or magazines on the subject have been on Bonsai as well, until now. Unfortunately this enthrallment with Bonsai by the members of the vast majority of clubs or societies has resulted in many enthusiasts being shamefully ignorant of Penjing's very existence. And if some have been aware of this ancient art form it was viewed as a footnote to the historical development of Bonsai and arrogantly dismissed or belittled. Penjing in western countries at least was considered to be rather unimportant even an irrelevant curiosity. Much to my irritation most people still refer to Penjing as "Chinese Bonsai" this is inaccurate and ignorant, for they are markedly different in character.

All this misunderstanding is slowly changing... In the past few decades in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan Penjing has undergone something of a resurgence, a revival of interest from academics and aficionados alike. Penjing clubs and societies have sprung up like wildfire in these countries saving this noble form of art from extinction. Finally Bonsai lovers in western countries are beginning to take serious notice of this long neglected and refined art form. The National Bonsai Museum in Washington, for example, along with the purchase of a select collection of Penjing from an artist in Hong Kong has even in recent years changed it name to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. This is sure recognition of the highest order, and a positive sign that Penjing's fortunes have changed for the better.

With three different categories of Penjing (tree Penjing, landscape or rock Penjing and now land and water Penjing) and many regional schools and styles it is a fascinating art form. Qingquan Zhao is one of its most talented and creative exponents working today, having mastered all three categories as well as the sub-category of tree Penjing - Wenren Mu or literati style - probably the hardest and most rewarding style of tree Penjing. Mr Zhao however has a particular passion for creating aesthetically beautiful land and water Penjing that defy belief. A form of Penjing that he pioneered, at least in the modern sense for there are tantalizing records of its existence in Chinese art and literature going back centuries, as this wonderful book will show. Being a mixture of tree and rock Penjing the "Penjing stylist" tries to capture and distil the essence of a natural landscape (scenic lakes with islands, meandering streams or rivers for example) using dwarf trees, mosses for grass, rocks and occasionally water in a shui pen (a ceramic tray or pot). When this is done well and with skill as is the case with Mr Zhao, the effect is magical. This book is a portfolio of some of his most distinguished creations to date, with chapters that shed light on Penjing's important role in Chinese culture and literature.

The book also offers practical chapters on finding the right materials for creating a land and water Penjing, they show you how to select rocks and trees, how to place and combine the various elements in a pot so that they look natural and harmonious, and how to properly display, maintain and care for your Penjing. This comprehensive volume also discusses Penjing's interrelation to its larger counterpart - the classical landscape garden, and the related disciplines of landscape painting and Chinese nature poetry - which at intervals intersperses the text.

While the quality of many of the photographs in this long overdue book vary greatly (some are under or over exposed) this doesn't detract from the sheer beauty of the Penjing shown. For those who love and appreciate Bonsai, Penjing: Worlds of Wonderment will be a breath of fresh air, a revelation and a welcome glimpse into one of China's revered, but hidden and least known artistic legacies. This book is a milestone in the long and arduous journey to rehabilitate and revitalize this timeless natural art form, one that is hopefully the first of many such publications to come.