Not Liking Certain Features of Trees in Nature

[one_bonsai]

A bonsai tree should have all the features of that tree in nature. What if you don't like certain features? For example I'm not a big fan of jins in Junipers. I find them distracting.

 

[Potawatomi13]

One must study many trees to perhaps gain an appreciation of some things. Sometimes certain things which give others awe, inspiration just will not "grab" us. Good natural looking Jins or Shari add greatly to image of age in a tree and if you do(without)this way "maybe" someday will look unsatisfying to you.

 

[Shibui]

I don't think bonsai need have ALL the features of trees in nature. Bonsai is a representation of nature, not a photograph. There is not really room on a bonsai to fit in all the features of a real tree. We need to distil the essence of what is the tree and minimise it until we can represent that essence in a miniature form.
If you, personally, don't like certain features or types of trees or anything else for that matter then don't have those sort of bonsai in your collection and just walk by those trees at a show. Grow and appreciate the type of trees you do like. there are no rules that say you must have junipers with jins, just as there are no rules that say you must like all the paintings or sculptures at an art gallery or love every genre of music. People are different and that's good but don't be surprised if one day you start to appreciate different bonsai forms when you have learnt more about it.

 

[peterbone]

I think it comes down to where you grew up, which determines your mental image of a tree. If you grew up in northern mountainous regions and saw gnarled trees with plenty of deadwood then you'll probably end up wanting to recreate that as bonsai. Personally I grew up in the South of England and mostly want to cultivate deciduous broadleaf trees with minimal deadwood.

 

[Vance Wood]

I think it comes down to a reality check: Can you show me a world class Juniper bonsai that does not have a lot of dead wood on it; Jins, Shari, Oros, eta-jins and an assortment of elements that express age? Now can you show me a world class Juniper that expresses age without these elements?

 

[Adair M]

I think it comes down to where you grew up, which determines your mental image of a tree. If you grew up in northern mountainous regions and saw gnarled trees with plenty of deadwood then you'll probably end up wanting to recreate that as bonsai. Personally I grew up in the South of England and mostly want to cultivate deciduous broadleaf trees with minimal deadwood.

I agree. I didn’t really appreciate the deadwood junipers until I went on a mountain hike in the Sierras to study them. Now, after seeing some 3000 year old trees, with awesome deadwood, I understand.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

A bonsai tree should have all the features of that tree in nature. What if you don't like certain features? For example I'm not a big fan of jins in Junipers. I find them distracting.

Then you haven’t seen enough junipers. Stick around a while and you’ll get there.

 

[Forsoothe!]

It's your property. Do with it what you wish. If you are captive to winning ribbons awarded by others, you will need to make trees that look like what the Judges expect. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Mayank]

That's an interesting way to explain it. It makes sense to me, especially the Pissarro Montmartre analogy! Recently, our club (Four Seasons Bonsai Club, SE Michigan) had John Wall come down (or up!) from Tennessee for a presentation. Members asked him a similar question about should trees reflect nature to a T or could they have more pronounced or exaggerated nuances that would look weird on a larger scale. John said that it really depended on the situation and one's personal esthetic but he looked at bonsai as more of a stylized version of a natural situation. For example certain bonsai (eg what some members are calling "sumo" style, and also certain maples that have really large nebaris and root spread) would probably look unreal if they were blown up to a 20-25 foot scale.

 

[one_bonsai]

I think it comes down to where you grew up, which determines your mental image of a tree. If you grew up in northern mountainous regions and saw gnarled trees with plenty of deadwood then you'll probably end up wanting to recreate that as bonsai. Personally I grew up in the South of England and mostly want to cultivate deciduous broadleaf trees with minimal deadwood.

I think you may have something here. I'm from Australia and here we don't have Junipers growing in the wild. We have mainly Eucalyptus trees. You do see Eucalypts with dead branches, but the dead branches are small in comparison to the size of the tree. So when I see a Juniper with a huge jin, it just looks strange to me.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Maybe this is a just question of personal preferences verses the strict Japanese aesthetic which is most often applied to judging and critiques of trees by high mucky-mucks at bonsai events? This or that style should have this or that appearance, or feature, or pot, and the owners often may or may not want to do that? Many people in smaller shows choose to not have their tree judged/critiqued by the guest professional. Personally, I always have mine judged/critiqued and silently cringe as this or that aspect is bullied. I march to the beat of a different drummer so my trees are never in the running for Best of Show, but I'm always in the money for People's Choice.

I have advocated for a definition of American bonsai for 20 years wherein American show visitors like "pretty" as opposed to rugged, but il cognoscenti go for formal evergreens in plain-Jane pots. Everyone likes dramatic, the Itailians seem to own the category of giant yamadori with very highly worked deadwood, wannabes collect four inch diameter stumps that will take forever to hide the chop, and nobody takes figs seriously. Nobody takes my view seriously either, but what the Hell, I may be ahead of my time, or just out of step... I can hear the beat, and we all have our own agenda.

 

[Adair M]

Maybe this is a just question of personal preferences verses the strict Japanese aesthetic which is most often applied to judging and critiques of trees by high mucky-mucks at bonsai events? This or that style should have this or that appearance, or feature, or pot, and the owners often may or may not want to do that? Many people in smaller shows choose to not have their tree judged/critiqued by the guest professional. Personally, I always have mine judged/critiqued and silently cringe as this or that aspect is bullied. I march to the beat of a different drummer so my trees are never in the running for Best of Show, but I'm always in the money for People's Choice.

I have advocated for a definition of American bonsai for 20 years wherein American show visitors like "pretty" as opposed to rugged, but il cognoscenti go for formal evergreens in plain-Jane pots. Everyone likes dramatic, the Itailians seem to own the category of giant yamadori with very highly worked deadwood, wannabes collect four inch diameter stumps that will take forever to hide the chop, and nobody takes figs seriously. Nobody takes my view seriously either, but what the Hell, I may be ahead of my time, or just out of step... I can hear the beat, and we all have our own agenda.

@Forsoothe, your line of thinking: “standards shouldn’t matter or be applied to me” is on the surface seductively attractive. Yet, if everyone did this, eventually there would be no standards of excellence, no reward for hard work, attention to detail, or discipline.

Your attitude is exactly the kind of thinking that allowed the Japanese automobile manufacturers to take control of the US automobile market. Along with the Germans on the top end. And the Italians in the Sports car segment.

This is the kind of complacency that led to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Now, I’m not saying that bonsai is in any way as major of a force as all that...

But, all your complaint about the “mucky-mucks”, and the standards, the styles, the judging criteria is highly insulting to the people who hold themselves to a higher standard, who work harder to meet those standards, who push themselves to learn, who are not content to be mediocre, who practice to develop skills, and take pride that they are pushing themselves to excell, rather than just @get by”.

Go listen to President Kennedy’s “why we choose to go to the moon” speech. We do it because it is hard!

Stop preaching mediocrity.

 

[LanceMac10]

 

[Deleted member 21616]

View attachment 255325

LOL

put 500 people who don't know how to play guitar in a room for X years, and they always tend to 'improve' in the same way. also, what makes a good country guitarist is the same as what makes a good metal guitarist.

 

[bonsaichile]

I agree with most of your argument, but I do believe that collective mediocrity is still possible. At the very least, I would say that an statement like that (either value) is a petitio princeps, since you can only assigne value judgements (mediocre or not) from within a value system (normativity). So there is no external way to verify whether or not the end results of throwing the norms put of the window would result in a more or less mediocre bonsai practice

 

[LanceMac10]

….you gotta' learn rhythm before you start shreddin"....

...make a "cookie-cutter", then talk about your "stifled creativity"......




I think you should always perform work on a tree as if it would be "judged" sometime in the future.



...and someone telling me "that's pretty' when they don't necessarily quite know what they are looking for is hardly a path to advancement.....

 

[Deleted member 21616]

I agree with most of your argument, but I do believe that collective mediocrity is still possible. At the very least, I would say that an statement like that (either value) is a petitio princeps, since you can only assigne value judgements (mediocre or not) from within a value system (normativity). So there is no external way to verify whether or not the end results of throwing the norms put of the window would result in a more or less mediocre bonsai practice

i wasn't presenting an argument. you can observe the system in operation as it is repeated in all aspects of life. Examples are the animal eye, language, engineering, architecture, etc. Even physical 'limitations' cannot stop it, which is why Olympic world records are broken every year! Why are runners or swimmers faster today than they were 50 years ago? Look at the numbers of the 100m freestyle from 1960 to today. Everybody is doing swimming, swinging their arms and kicking their legs using the same muscles. but there is no mediocrity because the social normativity (the culture of swimming) is conducive to hypertrophy and fitness at the various levels. it is not a question of one swimmer being faster than another, it is a question of improvement over time through the accumulation of collective learning. moreover, the 'ideals' of swimming (like the ideals of bonsai) will always and repeatedly develop in the same direction given the constraints of the environment, material, and matter at hand. you can't be a good swimmer by flapping your arms like a bird.

@LanceMac10 said "you gotta' learn rhythm before you start shreddin", and that applies not only to every individual but to every sub-community and the community of guitarists a whole.

what is not observable is any form of naturally occurring and stable collective mediocrity -- can you site even 1 example?

we're getting far from @Adair M 's original post though. All i meant to do is agree with Adair by adding that there are natural reasons for the existence of our current 'rules' or 'standards', and even if we could hypothetically erase them they would come right back!

principii by the way, it's the genetive

 

[Adair M]

Listen to what @Forsoothe says. He says he’ll let an educated judge critique his tree, but he “cringes” from the criticism. He doesn’t say that he tries to learn from it. He says he would prefer a whole new standard upon which to be judged: an “American Pretty Standard”. Well, he was being judged upon a “Pretty Standard”. The judge was telling him what was “not Pretty”! Only, Forsoothe doesn’t want to learn anything. No, he’s rather lower the Standard. He goes for the “Participation Ribbon”.

I don’t want anything “American” to be associated with being half-assed. You want to create a category of “American Bonsai”? Ok, maybe it could be limited to American Species of trees. Something like that makes sense. Not having a category for crap bonsai.

 

[AlainK]

Like people, trees are not perfect.

It's natural for conifers, especially junipers, to have dead wood.

It's natural for Zelkova to have a "broom" shape where they grow as a native species in a suitable environment.

"Bonsai" is an evocation, a sort of epitome, an abstract, a shortcut, an artistic rendition of this balance between perfection and what's imperfect.

What I don't fancy is when bonsai are over-perfect, or over-artificial. Bonsai, to me, shouldn't be a caricature. On the contrary, it should have the minimum traits that makes one see a bonsai and see a Juniper growing on a mountain cliff, or a Maple by a pond, or an Oak in an pasture in Kent, UK - contrary to those who grow here, in a slightly different climate, they can have "uro"s.

To take a different example, we had a lot of arguments with B.L. who likes carved in deciduous.

I still think that it shouldn't be too systematic, or too excessive, but having been to Britain a few times, esp. in the south, I understand what's Bobby's aiming at. How to change death and decay into beauty and eternity ?...

So, yes, there are some features that I don't particularly like in trees, or in bonsai, but there is always someone that can make me change my mind

Just balances, just weights...

 

[Orion_metalhead]

what makes a good country guitarist is the same as what makes a good metal guitarist.

That is a loaded assumption. On a technical level, perhaps a good guitarist requires the same capabilities, but you cant take Doc Watson and expect him to be able to compose something in line with Ripping Corpse or Dissection. Its a totally different attitude. It goes both ways as well. I could never see Chuck Schuldiner or Terrance Hobbs composing something like Roy Buchanan.

Both could likely play each others music but would it sound right? Would the attitude be correct? I doubt it. Hell, even within the same band people playing the same songs are criticized... Iron Maiden's new material is a far cry from their 80's heyday and the band is almost entirely the same, other than Janick Gers. They dont even get the same impact out of classic songs now.