Thats easy Vance, the answer is, you can not, you can only describe one particular tree. That, you can do quite well. Like describing Colin§s literati. But you cannot described the entire "style", the moment you do, you will always find one that breaks away from what ever norm has been set. As for a good literati from a bad literati. Ummm thats not so easy. It is sort of a personal judgement. As such it depends much on the knowledge of the person. By knowledge I dont mean a text book type of knowledge, but the type you get from observation from either nature or other bonsai. That is the same as to ask what is a good or bad bonsai period. Who will judge? my guess it is that only time will judge, those pictures of good bonsai that will be remember and will always be regarded as good bonsai, will mean that they were good know and in the future. Those that are forgoten, probably were not so good. But thats my thought on the subject. An example of this. Well is all over, just grab any book of bonsai from the 60, 70, 80 etc and you will find lots of trees that can hardly be called bonsai. But there are some that even today are good bonsai. Examples can be found, in books like Kimura, who would not want one of his trees today!
|