Thought Process of a Beginner

midwestbonsai

There are fundamentalists in every subject be it art or otherwise.
You make some good points Vance.
-Paul

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triotary

That is why I mentioned Art is a very tacky, superficial and subjective issue.

But to say there’s no such thing as art is to say that there’s no such thing as religion.

Still I must say that one should not let rules or guidelines to restrict one's creation, else it will be just another subject that is the same as the rest of any the other subjects.

If Van Gogh painted just like what other impressionist had painted, we will not see the possibilities of textured brush strokes and amazing color palette. If Matisse, who can't draws, had chosen to learn to paint and draw like any other great artists, we will not have known that an unmatching set heavily saturated colors could be so astounding. If Picasso chose to draws and paint like what van Gogh did, we will not be able to enjoy the amazing composition of unbalanced perspectives of human beings and objects. If Duchamp did not provoked art, nobody would have questioned art. If every man who creates art follows a set of rules, art today will just be like art during the renaissance era.

If you look carefully at their paintings and compares to what society believes in beauty, you will not find any in them. Because beauty exists in them in a way on how they aroused our senses and ideologies.

Art is not in notions of beauty and representational rendering. Art does not needs explanation because it explains itself. It is a language that spoken to intrigue the eyes and provokes the brains.

Human being evolves because someone chose to go right when everybody else chose to go left.

sauce

True, but that is not the way it is always displayed. Art is in the eye of the beholder as they say but when the art is human excrement or garbage one begins to question the eyes that are beholding the art. Personally I've seen art that only provoked disgust and my own wonderment as to why anyone would call it art. But when I go to the Dali museum here in St. Pete. Fl. now my mind gets provoked.

Vance Wood

When Van Gogh first started out he and his contemporaries were looked down on as not very good artists. Times change and what they did has been considered good. Therefore today much in the way of art is evaluated through the eyes of those who appreciate Van Gogh as a great artist. There are fundamentals in this form of art that have been added to the litany of fundamentals. Fundamentals that are studied along with the works of the Dutch Masters and earlier periods.

As I have said before many times good art challenges people to examine it and discovery what makes it great. Those characteristics make their way into the "rule books". As I have said before great art creates rules for the lesser of us to follow. Rules do not create art they only seek to define them. One follows these rules in hopes of learning the artistic thought process that created them, and to hopefully come up with an artistic identity of their own. In doing so their greatness of understand or creativity is added to the list and these too are examined and followed by those that come after.

People change, society changes, art, music, and literature changes, and the study of all of them changes. The rules, and I hate that word, are nothing more than an analysis of the techniques and skills produced by those that preceded us.

__________________
The only finished bonsai is a dead one; me 1992 MABA Des Moines Iowa

rockm

"If Van Gogh painted just like what other impressionist had painted, we will not see the possibilities of textured brush strokes and amazing color palette. If Matisse, who can't draws, had chosen to learn to paint and draw like any other great artists, we will not have known that an unmatching set heavily saturated colors could be so astounding. If Picasso chose to draws and paint like what van Gogh did, we will not be able to enjoy the amazing composition of unbalanced perspectives of human beings and objects. If Duchamp did not provoked art, nobody would have questioned art. If every man who creates art follows a set of rules, art today will just be like art during the renaissance era."

Van Gogh and other impressionists based their art on the basics. They knew the tools and techniques to achieve their ends--many of them also studied Japanese art for different kinds of compositional and elemental tools that were previously not well-known in Europe. They weren't the artistic rebels popular culture has made them out to be, so much as they were knowledgeable innovators. The thought they were not following rules is absurd. They were following rules, both western and eastern.

"Still I must say that one should not let rules or guidelines to restrict one's creation, else it will be just another subject that is the same as the rest of any the other subjects."

No don't let rules restrict your bonsai. Don't be surprised, however, when your trees look like crap...Experimental bonsai mostly look exactly like experiments, not like trees.

"When did nature says that a thick trunk is a must for a true form of a tree? When did nature says that a tree to be considered a tree, it must grows to 30ft?"

This kind of goes against your reasoning about art doesn't it? If man is a slave to what nature says, then why bother with anything "artistic" at all?

Vance Wood

You are correct. Here are some of my thoughts on this issue. I cannot now find my book from school on Art History. But, I will bet you a five mile walk up a steep hill in my bare feet in an ice storm that most of the so called great masters attended either a formal art school, or studied with another master before they corrupted themselves.(just joking here) The point is these guys were educated, they new the principles and fundamentals of color, depth and the techniques of using different media. The same should be true of bonsai. If you are not willing to learn from the fundamentals, and you teach that the fundamentals are worthless then everyone who goes into bonsai is left with the concept of re-inventing the wheel.

__________________
The only finished bonsai is a dead one; me 1992 MABA Des Moines Iowa

triotary

What you have been talking about are all true, but I think there is a small misunderstanding here~

When I say there are no fundamentals in creating art, I meant to say that when one creates art, the idealization of a vision should not be held down by rules, else the end results will be just in the "safe zone," and be like any other subjects. It is the risk that you have to take. Men who have made history have leaded a difficult path before they achieved something. It is because they are willing to take a path where no other man has taken before, and by all means, they don't succeed with just one try or 100 tries, but they have failed more that you can imagined, before they achieved something that will change history. But of course, not everyone of us are willing to take this path, as life to most of us, is too precious to suffer failures ^_^

Think about it~ How does everything in front of you came about? Nobody taught Bell to create a telephone. Nobody taught Edison to create a light bulb. Nobody taught Bill Bernbach that an advertising ad does not need to appear to be an advertising ad. They did because of their own visions and talents.

Every art movement that existed out there are because of someone decided to break away from the cookie cutter, and followed their visions and created a new perspective in art.

The fundamentals in art, which you are stressing on, are practiced in one's process of creating art.

When one goes to an art school, they will be taught on color theory, painting skills, etc. These are skills that could be taught and through practice, they could be perfected.

But what I'm stressing about is Talent. The talent to create a new perspective in art. Raw talent could be honed to perfection with the right skills or we could say fundamentals. But no talent could be honed with any perfected skills.

But ultimately, a talent is a very rare thing, so are those men that made history. Well, I guess what you say about this is true: “If you are not willing to learn from the fundamentals, and you teach that the fundamentals are worthless then everyone who goes into bonsai is left with the concept of re-inventing the wheel.” It is true because not every one of us has the ability to create something new when everything is almost already created

I’m a person who is willing to take chances and make things happen, even though it takes many countless tries

btw, Van Gogh is an expressionist.

Vance Wood

Tiotary: You wrote the following in the beginning of this thread. Both this and your latest response are essentially correct to a point. Here is my problem and it doesn't matter if Van Gogh was a two-headed chicken with Whooping cough, all of the great masters no matter how good they were, studied those that came before them before they made their mark outside the box. By doing so they expanded the view of the fundamentals. The point is they took time to learn about their craft.

If beginners take at face value the points often made here by you and by some others that no one can teach talent etc. then they assume that they really don't need to understand the historic fundamentals of the art they pursue. They just need to "use the Force Luke" to make beautiful bonsai. If someone has talent they may be able to see what needs to be done but because of lack of technique and lack of knowledge of the material they may never be able to realize the "vision".

On the other hand, in an attempt to make a particular tree do what they have envisioned, because of a lack of knowledge about the material, or a misunderstanding of the techniques they have utilized, the tree may die. Both tracks lead to bridges that are out. Both are the direct consequence of ignoring the fundamentals.

Fundamentals are a two sided coin as far as bonsai is concerned, the cultivational and the creative. In order for someone to become proficient in bonsai it is necessary to not only have the mechanical tools but the technical tools. The creative fundamentals are no less important. Just having talent may in the end make a great artist, but getting to the point that takes you beyond the traditional will be a much longer journey.

__________________
The only finished bonsai is a dead one; me 1992 MABA Des Moines Iowa

rockm

"Nobody taught Bell to create a telephone. Nobody taught Edison to create a light bulb."

Bull. Bell and Edison didn't come up with their ideas out of the blue. They, and few other inventors and researchers, had been working on their ideas for some time. The ideas were based on a rock solid foundation of physics and electrical theory. Edison put two and two together, a metal filament burning in a vacuum will produce light, but won't be consumed. Bell extrapolated that since a wire could transmit electrical pulses, why not the human voice, since it's basically a series of pulses.

No. Nobody taught them "how" to build their invenstions, but the blueprints were there. They interpreted them.

"But you must see that Art is an expression with no fundamentals"

Art as expression with no thought for the fundamentals of communications isn't art. It's self indulgence. Bonsai--and other art--is about communicating a message to the viewer. It must speak in terms the viewr can understand. The "rules" are the vocabulary in that conversation between artist and viewer. Without a fundamental set of words--straight branches on straight trunks=serene tree, or twisted branches on a twisted trunk=old tree, No bar branches to prevent the eye from moving easily up the trunk--the image babbles. It is not coherent.

Does that mean you haveto strictly follow the "rules." Of course not. Means you have to know how to apply them and when NOT to apply them. This isn't an easy thing to learn--Not applying them simply because they are "rules," isn't art...It's an excuse.