Design is ........... a few thoughts from painters.........

Anthony · Nov 26, 2017

The Head, the Heart and the Hand
Logic ------ Emotion ------- Craft

An object's appeal, must first enter through the eye to influence the head and the heart.

You make the design so appealing that the viewer must have it.
[ basic law of business as sales go for luxuries , say Jade, Oil paintings .... ]

Design is heavily logic, though the Appeal is emotion.

These are the watch words of Traditional Painters [ Think Renaissance and Baroque ]
out of the Ateliers of today.

How do you apply it to Bonsai?
Good Day
Anthony

* Oh and Sculpture in the round has an optimum side for viewing and lesser sides
of visual appeal.
See the Michaelangelo Pieta

Same works for Bonsai. A front, but it is pleasing as it turns.

Vance Wood · Nov 26, 2017

Anthony said:
The Head, the Heart and the Hand
Logic ------ Emotion ------- Craft

An object's appeal, must first enter through the eye to influence the head and the heart.

You make the design so appealing that the viewer must have it.
[ basic law of business as sales go for luxuries , say Jade, Oil paintings .... ]

Design is heavily logic, though the Appeal is emotion.

These are the watch words of Traditional Painters [ Think Renaissance and Baroque ]
out of the Ateliers of today.

How do you apply it to Bonsai?
Good Day
Anthony

* Oh and Sculpture in the round has an optimum side for viewing and lesser sides
of visual appeal.
See the Michaelangelo Pieta

Same works for Bonsai. A front, but it is pleasing as it turns.

I think you are missing a couple of points here Anthony, though you are not wrong. It really does boil down to the difference between craft and art. As simply as I can break it down, as I now understand it, craft is essentially a repetitive duplication of what was originally produced by art. This is not to demean the artistry involved in producing the quality of a craft. True art is the birthing of a form that has not existed previously, it is the product of an imagination that goes beyond current thinking. In that; the artistic crafts will follow.

Anthony · Nov 26, 2017

Vance,

I use the word - Design - to mean ------ Original Creations - not as someone down here put it
- go watch what others are growing and ,.............. copy.
Thanks for responding.
Anthony

In Traditional Oil Painting - one must first copy to learn and if you have anything to say,
it can or might become ART
History or extended time --------- if the work speaks to generations and commands
attention continuously ------------- e.g. Mona Lisa

Which is why you go away from everyone for say 3 to 5 years and evolve.

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Vance Wood said:
I think you are missing a couple of points here Anthony, though you are not wrong. It really does boil down to the difference between craft and art. As simply as I can break it down, as I now understand it, craft is essentially a repetitive duplication of what was originally produced by art. This is not to demean the artistry involved in producing the quality of a craft. True art is the birthing of a form that has not existed previously, it is the product of an imagination that goes beyond current thinking. In that; the artistic crafts will follow.

I see art as being able to evoke feeling and partcipation, spiritually or emotionally, in the viewer. Craft is the means to that end.

Vance Wood · Nov 26, 2017

twisted trees said:
I see art as being able to evoke feeling and partcipation, spiritually or emotionally, in the viewer. Craft is the means to that end.

Craft is an art in that it takes artistic ability to perform a craft and do it the kind of justice necessary. The major difference between a craft and an art is the craft is not usually the producer of an original thought or concept where art is. With all kudos to Al Kepler, he started this conversation maybe twenty years ago, it seems today it is time to go over it again.

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Vance Wood said:
Craft is an art in that it takes artistic ability to perform a craft and do it the kind of justice necessary. The major difference between a craft and an art is the craft is not usually the producer of an original thought or concept where art is. With all kudos to Al Kepler, he started this conversation maybe twenty years ago, it seems today it is time to go over it again.

Im not disagreeing. Yet art is rarely original.

Vance Wood · Nov 26, 2017

It can be said that all art is built upon the foundation of previous art----kind of like the Fibonacci Sequence. Bach invented modern musical scales but he built upon his predecessors, the same is true of Mozart and Beethoven, and the painters all have their roots into the muddy hand prints found on mountain sides and the caves of France., where the hand prints were followed by herds of buffalo and deer.

chicago1980 · Nov 26, 2017

See it, think it, feel it, and most important do it.

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Vance Wood said:
It can be said that all art is built upon the foundation of previous art----kind of like the Fibonacci Sequence. Bach invented modern musical scales but he built upon his predecessors, the same is true of Mozart and Beethoven, and the painters all have their roots into the muddy hand prints found on mountain sides and the caves of France., where the hand prints were followed by herds of buffalo and deer.

Are we repeating forms and shapes from nature and our own experiences?

Vance Wood · Nov 26, 2017

twisted trees said:
Are we repeating forms and shapes from nature and our own experiences?

both probably.

Zach Smith · Nov 26, 2017

Very nice topic and good points from everyone. I think at the end of the day if it's art you just know it immediately (as experienced personally, and it may differ from person to person). There is art in craft and craft in art.

Anthony · Nov 26, 2017

Imagination ---------- is the brain scrambling seen and experienced situations.
To produce ideas anew.

Nothing new under the sun, but it can still be different and worth pondering.

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Vance Wood said:
both probably.

So is originality just the new juxtaposition of existing forms?

Anthony · Nov 26, 2017

Has this shifted from Bonsai and Design to other, perhaps personal ?

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Anthony said:
Has this shifted from Bonsai and Design to other, perhaps personal ?

Really. I see it as being a discussion of the concept of art. But who am I?

Lorax7 · Nov 26, 2017

As someone who is also a painter and who has done sculpture in other media before, bonsai is sculpture to my mind. The dividing line between art and design/craft is the same in bonsai as elsewhere. Art is the meaningful expression of thoughts and emotions communicated through symbols encoded in a medium.

Is bonsai art? It can be. However, using the interpretation of the term “art” as it is generally regarded by the painters, sculptors, gallerists, curators in what is commonly referred to as the “art world” (instead of the more traditional colloquial usage of the word “art”), probably most bonsai fall into the category of design or craft, which is just fine. There’s nothing wrong with design or craft.

To be bonsai, the tree must present the form of an ancient adult tree in miniature and it should have a pleasing form. To be art, it must also encode human thoughts and emotions in symbols that can be read, interpreted, and felt by a suitably engaged viewer. That’s difficult to do well in any medium, but it's especially difficult to do in bonsai because of the constraints.

Imagine you’re a sculptor working with marble and working with the constraint that your finished sculpture must take the form of a small rock that creates for the viewer an illusion that it is a large boulder as such boulders look in nature. It must also have a nice form and proportions that make it beautiful. How much room do you have to innovate and create an original expression of your thoughts and emotions on some topic of concern to you within this narrowly defined sculptural form? You can’t just chisel away and make a statue. It has to both look like a big natural boulder and simultaneously convey some other meaningful expression.

Suppose you’re Picasso and you’re about to make Guernica, but you’re trying to do it in this very constrained genre of sculpture instead of as a painting. Can you really execute that painting with all of the horror and anguish it communicates, but do it in this other medium with all of its stringent rules? Could you make Guernica as a bonsai?

Vance Wood · Nov 26, 2017

It is kind of like being a congressman trying to come to grips with what is art and what is Pornography. I guess if a nude is art why is a nude with an erection pornography? So no matter where you go with this thing you run head long into the grand bonner where we wait for someone else to tell us what art is. The thing about art, at least as I know it, is a relationship between the artist and the subject attempting to present an image of life. If no one else understands that relationship that's too bad. The fact you talked about it proves it's art.

twisted trees · Nov 26, 2017

Lorax7 said:
As someone who is also a painter and who has done sculpture in other media before, bonsai is sculpture to my mind. The dividing line between art and design/craft is the same in bonsai as elsewhere. Art is the meaningful expression of thoughts and emotions communicated through symbols encoded in a medium.

Is bonsai art? It can be. However, using the interpretation of the term “art” as it is generally regarded by the painters, sculptors, gallerists, curators in what is commonly referred to as the “art world” (instead of the more traditional colloquial usage of the word “art”), probably most bonsai fall into the category of design or craft, which is just fine. There’s nothing wrong with design or craft.

To be bonsai, the tree must present the form of an ancient adult tree in miniature and it should have a pleasing form. To be art, it must also encode human thoughts and emotions in symbols that can be read, interpreted, and felt by a suitably engaged viewer. That’s difficult to do well in any medium, but it's especially difficult to do in bonsai because of the constraints.

Imagine you’re a sculptor working with marble and working with the constraint that your finished sculpture must take the form of a small rock that creates for the viewer an illusion that it is a large boulder as such boulders look in nature. It must also have a nice form and proportions that make it beautiful. How much room do you have to innovate and create an original expression of your thoughts and emotions on some topic of concern to you within this narrowly defined sculptural form? You can’t just chisel away and make a statue. It has to both look like a big natural boulder and simultaneously convey some other meaningful expression.

Suppose you’re Picasso and you’re about to make Guernica, but you’re trying to do it in this very constrained genre of sculpture instead of as a painting. Can you really execute that painting with all of the horror and anguish it communicates, but do it in this other medium with all of its stringent rules? Could you make Guernica as a bonsai?

Nice.

Anthony · Nov 26, 2017

You know, I have never had a problem with Bonsai being called a craft.
When one gets up in the morning to tend to the joy..............
Or to tend to them as the day ends.............

I have watched Kung Fu movies where the Chinese use them as wall decoration,and
that doesn't bother me either.

I just like and enjoy sometimes a seed becomes tree, but the Design is what takes
it higher.

You sit and just relax on a pillow,the tree sits on the pouf and time passes.
Memories, thoughts, enjoying how the mass cuts the air around it, the negative spaces,
that give movement. The health of the tree.
The mounds of green how they fit together, shadows they create, touching light, retreating
back into each other.
The rhythm, of visual movement.
Then often an idea pops into your head................
Good Day
Anthony

Anthony · Nov 27, 2017

So we have been working towards this with a J.B.pine
[ apologies the scanner cut off part ]

The branches have been simplified.

Negative spaces are noted.

As time goes by more work will done on the sketch.

Design is ........... a few thoughts from painters.........

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