Oh this just gets better - I am really liking the AoB!!
Traditional styles are for me painting by numbers! You follow the numbers with the little pots of paints and out pops a neat little copy of Van Goghs Sunflowers!! Does your little masterpiece have soul and will it move people - no way! Are you quite pleased with it - maybe? Does it make you a great artist, maybe, but what you have just done is not great art and it certainly does not push the bounds of art. This I feel, is where a lot of US art is (as I have stated elsewhere I do not feel qualified to comment on bonsai alone). You can see it architecute every day - another glass clad tower is not great architecture/art; it is the same as so many others. The Chrysler Building on the other hand.......Someone in the US that takes a Ponderosa Pine and tries to create a copy of a Great Japanese Black Pine by following Japanese tradtion is trying to put a square peg in a round hole. The Ponderosa is an American tree that should have an American style - it should look like a Ponderosa - not a maple or a azalea or anything else it is not. You would not try and take a Florida Boxwood and make it look like a Japanese Black Pine.
The beauty vs ugly debate also is fascinating. As I have said elsewhere I am European, therefore I feel obliged to be at least a little chauvinistic!! A beautiful woman does not become ugly as she ages just look at Catherine Deneuve, she remains beautiful but she has aged. She does not require plastic surgery or any other form of denial to remain a beautiful woman. She is certainly more attractive than Joan Rivers!!! A bonsai or any art form is the same - the Chrysler building mentioned above is still good architecture even if it is old - some may say this makes it even more so as it has stood the test of time. Surely this gets at the very essence of bonsai. Appreciation of art/beauty.
To define beauty is another matter - it is almost art on it's own. What makes something beautiful is a concept that the majority of us struggle to define thus the majority of us are not great artists. One tree with a trunk and branches is ugly and the other of the same species with similar physical characteristics portrays uglyness/harsh conditions/a hard life/age in beautiful manner! Way to abstract for me. I would need to leave such debates for the budding Platos and Aristotles!
Again thank you for the entertaining debate - I am finding it so much more challenging than the conventional forum with photos of $20 chinese elms and people asking what is wrong with them!!
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