It's just a matter of time, and waiting (something bonsai artists do well).
The modern art world is so much an academic game of smoke and mirrors and a complex dance of money, investment, misdirection, and widely held opinions. It's as though they say: "don't bother us with silly little garden projects, we are charged with the lofty responsibility of gathering and archiving tangible works that will define our times. Just let us play this game of deciphering the artist's
Intention, and then judging the merit of what we think it might mean" (as though the ability to visually capture and verbalize that mysterious process of creativity and creation will unlock all the secrets still hidden in Pandora's box). Bonsai will prove in hindsight, perhaps within the next 20 years to have been pivotal, hugely influential and profound in so many ways.
Art patrons have money, but are searching for 'real' answers, artists have answers to exchange for money - sometimes resulting in the transferring of 'art'. The gallery, the auction house, the Grand Museum, lend 'experts' to help the inquisitive but indecisive. Some renegade bonsai adventurer will have to do something truly Avant Garde, "outside the box" (insert cliche here), "eye opening" and very public to break the invisible line. When Damien Hirst decides to encase an ancient living tree in a jug of formaldehyde lots of people will stand around and speculate 'what it could mean, why did he do that, what does he know that we don't know' (
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/ ... 1voge.html)
Perhaps the most fun could be had in the meantime if we all just play along. Bonsai is certainly
NOT art (reverse psychology can be extremely effective)! Bonsai is much too complex and intricate, and requires a great deal of knowledge and experience to even begin to comprehend. Obviously you (writer of grant money, art world insider, and self appointed arbiter of taste) simply can not possibly understand.
~ Michelle