Are Trident Maple Brooms Taboo?

bonsaibeginner

Did Walter make your point for you? I missed that.
Paul

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Walter_Pall

Now what is this in comparison?

It is a trident maple that was shaped to look like a good bonsai. It was shaped to please the standard bonsai taste.

Is it art? I think it is more craft than art.

Is it good? Probably.

Is it beatiful? What exactly is beatiful?
Is it what pleases your taste? What if your taste is corrupted? If you have learnded to follow your brain rather then your soul when judging a bonsai?

Is this beatiful? Probably. Does that make it good art? No, not at all. It is the concept of good craft to make something that is beatiful. It is meant to please most people and to get the most money when sold.

For whom are we making bonsai? To please the general public? Yes, that's exactly what the big names do. Because it is their job, they make a living of that.

Do we have to copy the big names? Not necessarily. It is not our job to make money with bonsai. We can do what we like.

Are we aware that what we like is what we are told to like?
Usually not.

Food for thought
Walter Pall

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Walter_Pall

Al,

why sould your small leave theory be valid for the naturalistic broom and not for the neoclassical informal upright as posted. I think small leaves are small leaves and big ones are big ones. You have to try to get the tree larger or the leaves smaller. For a trident this means about two feet is a very good size. Regardless whether naturalistic or neoclassical.

Where is Andy Rutledge in this discussion? I miss him!

best regards
Walter Pall
http://walter-pall.de

Walter_Pall

I made the test with the average bonsai person - my wife. She has no clue what we are discussing here, absolutely computer illiterate. We never speak about this. She never heard of the naturalsitic bonsai style.

I showed her the three pictures and asked her what she thought.

The picutre of the wild maple is beatiful, the picture of the fat trident is beatiful, the virtual with the wild maple potted is terrible, the pot is too small and the whole thing looks contrived, artificial.

How about that. Listen to this 'the wild tree just as it is in a pot looks ARTIFICIAL. Now this is the truth. Or is it the truth of the general public.

Or is it that if the great artists of the past had listened to the truth of the general public we would have never progressed.
Or is this the answer to the question 'why have so many great artists died poor'?
Or is not everyone who is misunderstood a genius. Maybe he is just a fool?

Or are we asking too many questions?
Maybe we should just tame this wild maple a bit to make it more pleasing.
For whom?

Sounds like Nick Lenz by now.

best regards
Walter Pall

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Carl_Bergstrom

I remember this photograph of Walter's well from a previous post. It is one of the nicest pictures of a natural tree that I've seen. The spirit or the feeling that one gets from this tree is a marvelous thing to aim for in doing bonsai.

Does this tree itself work as bonsai? Not for me. It looks pretty poor in Al's virtual, and not all that much better in Walter's.

Why?

Let me try out one idea. I think much of it comes down to the way that the eye percieves the tree itself in the two different settings, nature and pot. In its natural setting, one sees the tree not as an object per se but as part of a greater whole that includes the surrounding landscape. In a pot, the combination of pot and tree is itself seen as a discrete object.

Why does this matter? Let me take just one aspect of design, balance. In the natural setting, this tree is balanced beautifully, because the whole environment contributes and to eye is part of the tree and visa versa. (Some considerable degree of credit goes to the photographer for composing the scene in this way, of course!)

So when I look at this tree in the natural setting, my eye moves like this:

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

The dynamic imbalance of the tree - this sense that it is left-heavy, that it wants to rotate counterclockwise, as indicated by the red arrow - serves to draw the tree into the rest of the composition and at the same time is balanced by the opposing visual weight of the grove to the left.

Now put the tree into a pot. What happens to balance?

Walter has dealt with the balance issue so far as possible, planting the tree to the right and letting the weight of the pot serve as counter. But now the tree/pot combination is itself an object, separate from the rest of the composition. That' just how our eye sees things. Once that happens, the scenery - or even a three point display cannot compensate for imbalance in the primary piece. Artistically, it feels off-center, unsteady, unsettling.

Now if one were to emulate this style of tree - decidedly deciduous in form, natural curves with branches unafraid to reach upward and an asymmetry broom-like canopy - while observing basic rules of artistic composition such as balance, the results would be wonderful. I see this in the best of Walter's trees. I also see this in the some of best Japanese trees. Shohin, certainly. Many of the trees in Murata's Four Seasons of Bonsai.

Thoughts?

-Carl

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

Finally, I'm reminded of this tree of Ian's, linked from his gallery. (Except his right branch doesn't "dare" grow upward.)

You can see how he deals with balance. Perhaps the most prominant details are that the trunk emerges at an angle, the branching levels into horizontal tiers that yield stability (one may or may not feel this is "unnatural", but the visual consequence is a stabilizing one), and the heavier crown on the left side is balanced by the larger lower branch on the right.


Best wishes,
Carl

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In love with trees

Bart Thomas(deceased)

Are you sure you want it? That stone in the background is bigger than I'd want to carry.