The "Rules" of bonsai

[Adair M]

Adair, can I start a new thread and promote a Youtube video series that is "mostly" unrelated to bonsai, or is that against the rules?...

... I do think that it might pique the interest of a percentage of the B'nut crowd...

Sure! I'm not in charge of B'Nut! The Teahouse is the perfect place to post it, though.

 

[Adair M]

Hi Adair. We don't know each other, but would probably get along better if we actually met ...

My initial thought was, "If you want a human approach to structure and order, go look at skyscrapers in NYC. But if you want the structure and order of nature, go out in nature."

We can argue the pros and cons of these two aesthetics endlessly, but a living thing that supposedly presents natural structure and order to our mind ought to present an actual, natural sense of structure and order, not one imposed by human rules that have little relation to what we might actually find in nature.

Ah. There's the crux of the argument. Is bonsai supposed to be a miniaturized copy of trees that occur in nature? Or is bonsai an idealized version of what a perfect tree would/should look like?

If you say the former, then the tree you posted is a failure! You cleaned the deadwood and lime sulfured it. Nature doesn't do that. In fact, anything a person would do to the tree defiles what "nature would do".

Even Walter Pall admits that the goal of bonsai is not to reproduce in miniature purely natural trees. He states that attempting to do that is simply copying. And there's no "art" in that!

 

[grouper52]

I think you don't understand Dan very well.

And yes, that is a beautifully crafted bonsai, as far as I can tell from the video.

And no, his complaint was not humorous. It was right on. He has spent his entire life out in nature observing how trees actually look and grow, and yours violated that. To his eye, and to mine, it looks like a nicely crafted bonsai, but not look like a real tree.

 

[PiñonJ]

I don't think of it as bringing order to chaos. Most of us are trying to evoke a feeling with our trees. We are trying to distill the essence of the tree. In another thread, @Vance Wood called it surrealism, but I called it impressionism. So we don't let the tree grow however it wants to. If we did, it would just be a shrub in a pot. We are looking for the best image that we can make with the tree. There is a lot of leeway in this. You can make a beautiful image with a very traditional approach, or with a modern naturalistic approach, or even with a modern art approach - like the Artisans Cup tree planted in an old vacuum cleaner (there's Vance's surrealism). Any of these approaches should follow good design principles. And any good tree takes a lot of thought and effort.

 

[Adair M]

.

I think there is a problem with that view. It stultifies. Nature is not chaotic. It is very orderly and governed by the laws of physics however compared to traditional bonsai work, it is also free and almost limitless. Nature has structure too.
The problem when working with bonsai is that we need to re-learn how to ''see'' nature and how to truly appreciate it.
Eg; when we style a pine tree, we are taught that we need to bring branches down. We are told this because the Japanese aesthetic teaches that this is graceful and beautiful. However, there are just as may pines that naturally do not have branches descending but which grow upwards and remain that way for the entire life of the tree. There is a very old Canary Island pine in the botanic gardens in Melbourne. It has ascending branches. It is just as beautiful as any pine you might care to look at.
An example below:

View attachment 121319

IMO the only pine commonly worked on for bonsai that should have descending branches is the Japanese White pine. Most other species are much more freeform including the Black and certainly the Scots.
So I disagree that for example, directing branches upward on a pine, is ''bringing order to chaos'', it is just conforming to someone else's ''rules'' of beauty. (BTW, I do agree with everyone who says that we should first lean all the rules before attempting to deviate from the norm).




Again, I must disagree here Adair. Who says a formal upright should be orderly? My definition of a formal upright by the way is a tree with a straight trunk. Nothing more. Most very old formal uprights (the ones which inspire awe in us) are anything but the accepted notion of orderly.

Actually, MichaelS, usually JWP have rather horizontal branches. They're not very tall growing trees in nature. More like shrubs. When the snows come, the snow doesn't weigh their branches down, the whole tree is covered up by the snow!

We have Loblolly trees around here. If they live in a forest, they drop low branches when they get shaded out. If one lives out in the open, they will keep their branches, and their weight can make their branches cascade down a lot. There's one down the street, I'll take a picture and post it tomorrow.

 

[grouper52]

Ah. There's the crux of the argument. Is bonsai supposed to be a miniaturized copy of trees that occur in nature? Or is bonsai an idealized version of what a perfect tree would/should look like?

If you say the former, then the tree you posted is a failure! You cleaned the deadwood and lime sulfured it. Nature doesn't do that. In fact, anything a person would do to the tree defiles what "nature would do".

Even Walter Pall admits that the goal of bonsai is not to reproduce in miniature purely natural trees. He states that attempting to do that is simply copying. And there's no "art" in that!

I see . . . . you, of course, have read Walter Pall's foreword to my book about Dan .. . . .

Maybe I have been wrong - it may well be that we would not get along better if we actually met . . .

 

[wireme]

So I disagree that for example, directing branches upward on a pine, is ''bringing order to chaos'

Was that a typo? Did you mean to say directing branches downwards there?

Here's a ponderosa near me, probably more than 800 yrs old, sees a lot of snowfall every year.

 

[Adair M]

I think you don't understand Dan very well.

And yes, that is a beautifully crafted bonsai, as far as I can tell from the video.

And no, his complaint was not humorous. It was right on. He has spent his entire life out in nature observing how trees actually look and grow, and yours violated that. To his eye, and to mine, it looks like a nicely crafted bonsai, but not look like a real tree.

I spoke with Dan personally about my tree. He said he would have liked it if whoever pruned the branches had left jins instead. So, I reminded him that JBP are native to coastal areas of Japan. Where it's very humid, and broken branches font Jin the way they would up in the mountains, instead, they rot and fall off! Leaving scars on the trunk. Which eventually callous over. More callousing occurs when the trees are young and growing vigorously, not so much when the trees are old and mature. So an old knot hole is "natural" for the species!

He replied that he had never thought about it like that!

 

[Random User]

"Sure! I'm not in charge of B'Nut! The Teahouse is the perfect place to post it, though."

Just t clarify, I only addressed you because I thought you'd know the rules... and The Teahouse it will be.

I really like your tree even though the vid didn't show it clearly... the comments made me smile though... he might as well have said, "the tree is fantastic, even though I think the owner is a jerk!" lol... I hope your not offended.

 

[Adair M]

I see . . . . you, of course, have read Walter Pall's foreword to my book about Dan .. . . .

Maybe I have been wrong - it may well be that we would not get along better if we actually met . . .

No, I watched some video of Walter talking about doing bonsai in a cave using shadows of real trees as inspiration, but not the actual tree.

Complete BS.

Here's the thing... all of us, you, me, Dan, Walter, each of us has an image in our mind's eye of what we think trees look like. My image is likely very different than yours. We live in different part of the country. We have different weather. We have different trees growing in our environment.

We have no native "junipers" anywhere around here. We have some Eastern Red Cedars that have foliage something akin to the junipers that grow in California and the Rocky Mountains, but our cedars have very straight upright growth patterns. No tree keep Jin permanently here in Georgia. It rots away.

The classic gnarly juniper just doesn't exist here.

But put a pine tree in an open field, well, something like my tree could happen.

So, it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

 

[Adair M]

"Sure! I'm not in charge of B'Nut! The Teahouse is the perfect place to post it, though."

Just t clarify, I only addressed you because I thought you'd know the rules... and The Teahouse it will be.

I really like your tree even though the vid didn't show it clearly... the comments made me smile though... he might as well have said, "the tree is fantastic, even though I think the owner is a jerk!" lol... I hope your not offended.

Here's a better picture:



It's those dark holes in the trunk he was complaining about. He suggested that I fill them with cut paste and glue a little piece of bark on!

Ironically, Kathy Shaner, who studied in Japan and generally is a Classical bonsai artist said much the same thing!

Uh, no, I was not offended by anything Dan said. I fully realize that my tree is not the type of bonsai he prefers. It's a Classical bonsai.

He prefers going by a different set of "rules".

Ah ha! More rules!!! Lol!

 

[Random User]

"He prefers going by a different set of "rules".'

See, this is what I was trying to get at yesterday... now I'll say it point blank. I don't care a rats ass if it's Olympic figure skating, a poetry contest, or a bonsai competition, if you are not in the "inner circle", or closely connected to it, you will never win, even if you have the best performance, or outcome. For any of us amateurs to think that we'll ever win any major competition is delusional thinking at best...

Tastes will change in time and when they do, it will be "out with the old crowd and in with the new". Now I have no connection to anyone in the bonsai world, so I don't mind hurting anyone feelings... but, I've seen how these types of competitions are run and they are not accommodating to the new face in the crowd that does not possess the right connections. It is the same with the Arts Councils in Canada... you are not going to get any funding, or win any kind of prize unless you have the right academic degree and are known in the arts circle.

BTW, remember the Olympics about 20 years ago when the judging was rigged against the Canadian Pairs (I think it was) (I don't like figure skating, but remember the out cry and politics that followed). It was not until a large segment of American viewers began to scream bloody murder, that anything was done to remove those judges...

 

[Random User]

Now back to bonsai design... remember that poem that I posted yesterday? An economy of words, with an economy of lines, balanced with the utmost in form (or design) about a subject that (arguably) wan't even mentioned... that, is how you want to design a bonsai that the majority of people will like at the very first glance, AND, they won't even know why!... and thats why I posted the poem.

 

[Random User]

See you everyone, and thanks for all the fish!

 

[armetisius]

Adair,
Just stepped into this thread and haven't read it all
-- don't intend to --so I may be stepping wrong.
For a show? okay I see where they're coming from.
But I love the dang thing just like it is and really --come on
aren't they being just a little "a" retentive? Yes I understand
"good of the show; look its best; happy horse hockey all around; etc."
But if it bothers them that much tell them to take off their glasses
and squint.
If you can look at the tree above and only fixate on its slight flaws
Go Away you bother me. It is a thing of beauty in its own right.

 

[MichaelS]

Was that a typo? Did you mean to say directing branches downwards there?

Here's a ponderosa near me, probably more than 800 yrs old, sees a lot of snowfall every year. View attachment 121327View attachment 121328

Yes typo! I meant down.

 

[MichaelS]

I think it's a beautiful tree Adair and you should be proud of the achievement. It will get better with every passing year. Even though this kind of image is to me more in line with manicured Japanese garden trees and not so much natural trees, it still has inherent value and beauty. Personally though, even though we all have trees in this style and would probably never part with them, I believe that this can now be viewed as ''old'' or ''Japanese'' styling and that in the future, trees will no longer be shaped this way. I know I have made a point of stopping to do it even though most of my trees are shaped this way. Remember the West is far more innovative than the east and Japan especially. I used to dream of doing the Japan training thing for years. Now I'm kind of glad I didn't.
BTW, the scars on the pine won't take anywhere near 50 years to heal over. More like 10. Especially if encouraged to do so.

 

[MichaelS]

Here's a ponderosa near me, probably more than 800 yrs old, sees a lot of snowfall every year. View attachment 121327View attachment 121328

A beautiful subject. See how some branches go up and some down? Yet the whole works to perfection. The trouble here is that there is no formula to use and every project will require individual planning but if successful will result in truly unique bonsai.

 

[grouper52]

No, I watched some video of Walter talking about doing bonsai in a cave using shadows of real trees as inspiration, but not the actual tree.

I spoke with Dan personally about my tree.

Even Walter Pall admits that the goal of bonsai is not to reproduce in miniature purely natural trees. He states that attempting to do that is simply copying. And there's no "art" in that!

Quite the expert on the views of these two men, aren't you?

Yawn ....

.... and Adios.

 

[Adair M]

Quite the expert on the views of these two men, aren't you?

Yawn ....

.... and Adios.

Actually, no. I'm not. I know more about Walter than Dan. They both seem to be nice fellows one on one. I have conversed a bit with each of them. But neither live anywhere close to me, so my chances of seeing either of them frequently are slim.

And, for me personally, I have said this repeatedly, I don't consider myself much of an artist. For me, the challenge of bonsai is achieving the perfection of the proper needle length without resorting to cutting them, developing fine ramification, creating plate nebari, sumo trunks, etc. Many of those things are not "natural"! So, it's fair to say that I consider myself more of a craftsman than artist.

So, actually, I tend to appreciate the trees that are "manmade" as opposed to the yamadori that someone found in the mountains or in the swamps. I recognize that it takes effort and skill to collect them and keep them healthy, but much of what we admire and marvel about them was created by natural forces over hundreds of years. It wasn't by some talented person. The deadwood, I mean. Oh sure, talented people do come and enhance them with styling with wire and raffia, but the bones of the tree was a gift of God.

Just for conversation, what if collecting of yamadori became illegal? All bonsai must come from some type of nursery material? What then? Would that change the "rules" of bonsai? (Obvious a new rule "no collecting"). Would that change what styles are popular? Or would it just kill the hobby?