Is bonsai art and are you the artist ?

penumbra

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btw earlier i didnt mean character being nothing to me associated with how much you make, it had to do with practicing what you preach/being obnoxious

id consider your work art if it sold and you could support a family on it too, pay the typical 30+% to uncle sam at same time. or if it won awards based on votes, with a cash prize, etc. like my buddy John
in Luxembourg

i do think some bonsai can qualify as art, and it is an art form, for some

purposeful composition that is timeless (maintained in some cases as would be with bonsai)
and creates objective demand. views, awards, money, income, timelessness (kind of unmeasurable, more intuitive), etc.
To be honest, I didn't read you post but I did look at the pictures. 🤣
 

penumbra

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and i consider your pots art!
they seem to create a demand and sell - well done
someday when i can justify that discretionary spending
Thank you so much. I am glad they have been well received, but I don't think that the fact that they sell has anything to do with whether they are art, craft or whatever. It doesn't change the pot, it changes the way I feel about me. They are still evolving as am I.
Thank you again. It is a wonderful thing to be recognized for doing something that you love to do.
 

Shogun610

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Bonsai is an Art and Craft. The art aspect is IMO the final stage when it comes to displaying using stand , scroll, accent etc. the craft is the combined horticultural, design , pruning, carving, wiring , etc techniques that are used to facilitate an end goal on the specimen itself. There is also an aspect of how ceramics are used to pair with the trees as well to be displayed in its phase as a finished piece of art. Idk if I can quite call myself an artist, more of a student in continuous education.
 

Canada Bonsai

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So I’ve only been in bonsai for not that long . The thing is that I keep thinking of what even is bonsai and is it just an art medium ? Some artists use charcoal, paints , marble but then if people who create bonsai are just using trees to express ideas , show beauty , and self expression? I feel like the community on bonsai nut are a good representation of the whole bonsai community. So I would like to see if you guys consider that you are an artist that just uses bonsai as a art medium and if not , why aren’t you ?

The complexity of the question:'is bonsai 'art'? largely mirrors the more primordial question: 'what is art?' Here are some Monday morning thoughts:

IN GENERAL
The definition of art changes over time, and so have the way that things come to be called 'art'. Most things are viewed as art in virtue of their affiliation to the art world through one or more of its aspects: market, presentation, ideas, intention, etc. Here are some examples:
  • You can buy a mass-produced picture of a sunflower at Wal-Mart, frame it, and hang it on your wall. This becomes art in virtue of an affiliation to the art world: it being sold and presented as art
  • In the case of Damien Hirst's shark, or his less-famous sheep with golden horns (see attached), they are viewed as art in virtue of several affiliations to the art world: the context of their presentation, the agent's intention, and certainly by way of their affiliation to the art world's market. Consider that if that goat appeared in the context of a natural history museum, absent the name and intention of an artist, whether it is art is immediately less obvious.
There are seemingly infinite examples that show the different ways that things come to be viewed as art.

BONSAI
The relationship between craft and art is probably a very important one in this context of bonsai. The attached image contrasting art from 1762 vs 2014 is meant to express our well-studied transition way from craft and towards idea, concept and intellectualization but, comedy aside, both pieces are viewed as art nonetheless. While intention is arguably important from the very beginning, the question concerning intention becomes all the more important in the modern era. Consider Klein's blue monochomre (attached), which is arguably incomprehensible without knowledge of the artist's intention while displaying relatively low levels of craft.

To illustrate the dance between craft and concept in the context of bonsai, consider the two attached pomegranates. The way I read them, the literati puts concept and artistic intention over craft (though both are present), whereas the other is high craft and requires much less concept than the former. The potential for each of these trees to be viewed as art is present.

The second tree, for me, does a better job of raising the question about the relationship between technique, craft, and art, which I find to be a very interesting question in the context of bonsai. Here are some key questions that I like think about, (which are meant to open discussions, not yield answers):
  • Which bonsai techniques permit craft and art? Is pruning the art part of bonsai, or is wiring the art part of bonsai? What about repotting?
  • When applying a technique like decandling/pinching, is doing it in the right way and at the right time just technique? craft? or art?
  • What about the tree's response to decandling or pruning? In some sense what we are displaying is what the tree did in response to us, where we are potentially construed as environment from the tree's perspective
  • When performed in the right context and by the right person, can any of our techniques themselves be viewed as art in the way that we think about ballet or figure skating as art? Is the performance of chess an artistic performance?
It is also very interesting to think about these questions in terms of the individual's experience in-action. I can't recall the entire discussion in detail, but in this podcast w/ Ryan Neil I remember that we spoke about the roll of tradition, training and practice and the extent to which all of this structures and interacts with individual, subjective, artistic intention, and how this can change in the context of reflective/deliberate action V.S. states of 'flow'. To state it as a question:
  • When you're wiring a branch into the location where it feels just right, why does it feel just right? What is the role of our familiarity and past experiences and exposures, and how does all of that manifest itself through what might seem like artistic freedom at a given moment?
  • Follow up question: does the discussion about technique V.S. artistry change if we're talking about something like a Zelkova broom V.S. a Japanese Maple?
 

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hinmo24t

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Thank you so much. I am glad they have been well received, but I don't think that the fact that they sell has anything to do with whether they are art, craft or whatever. It doesn't change the pot, it changes the way I feel about me. They are still evolving as am I.
Thank you again. It is a wonderful thing to be recognized for doing something that you love to do.
right on. i was saying they are considered nice enough to generate a demand of some sort, which is impressive to me and correlates to value/consideration of art i believe.
if they were rubbish in eyes of the beholder, theyd collect dust or your plants solely, and could still be art to you. what you create works as art to others who purchase them
 

Lorax7

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id consider your work art if it sold and you could support a family on it too, pay the typical 30+% to uncle sam at same time. or if it won awards based on votes, with a cash prize, etc. like my buddy John
in Luxembourg

i do think some bonsai can qualify as art, and it is an art form, for some

purposeful composition that is timeless (maintained in some cases as would be with bonsai)
and creates objective demand. views, awards, money, income, timelessness (kind of unmeasurable, more intuitive), etc.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to pick on you a bit because this notion that art is only art if it is marketable is nonsense. There are entire art movements that are specifically anti-commercial or anti-aesthetic, etc. Dadaism, for example, was intended to confuse, infuriate, and offend the viewer. Here's a link to Hugo Ball's 1916 Dada manifesto and another link to Tristan Tzara's 1918 Dada manifesto. Here's probably the most famous Dadaist artwork, entitled "Fountain", by Marcel Duchamp. It's a urinal that Duchamp bought in a store, signed with the pen name R. Mutt, and entered in an art show. Its copies (the original no longer exists) are worth big bucks now, but it was outright rejected from the art show that Duchamp tried to enter it in, even though the show had been advertised as being open to accepting any artwork from anyone.
IntroDuchampFountainCOL.jpg


Nobody's going to spend any money on Paul McCarthy's NSFW "Tree" sculpture in Paris either. Still art though. Maybe not good art, but art nonetheless. You probably won't like the art, but I don't think there are too many people who would be totally ambivalent to it, having no reaction at all.

Another example of an artist that had no relation whatsoever to the art market that comes to mind is photographer Vivian Maier. She didn't intentionally sell her work or even show it to others during her lifetime. The photos were sold only because she failed to pay the rent for the storage unit where they were kept, shortly before she died. After her death, the people who'd bought the contents of the storage locker recognized what they had, promoted it, and her work became famous. Does that mean she wasn't an artist when she was alive simply because she never showed other people her work or sold any photos?

The quintessential examples though are the Lascaux cave paintings (and other neolithic works). Vibrant, amazing works, yet no market potential because there was no such thing as an art market when they were made.

If you make art, you're an artist. And art is art, regardless of whether or not it has any monetary value.
 

hinmo24t

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Sorry, but I'm going to have to pick on you a bit because this notion that art is only art if it is marketable is nonsense. There are entire art movements that are specifically anti-commercial or anti-aesthetic, etc. Dadaism, for example, was intended to confuse, infuriate, and offend the viewer. Here's a link to Hugo Ball's 1916 Dada manifesto and another link to Tristan Tzara's 1918 Dada manifesto. Here's probably the most famous Dadaist artwork, entitled "Fountain", by Marcel Duchamp. It's a urinal that Duchamp bought in a store, signed with the pen name R. Mutt, and entered in an art show. Its copies (the original no longer exists) are worth big bucks now, but it was outright rejected from the art show that Duchamp tried to enter it in, even though the show had been advertised as being open to accepting any artwork from anyone.
IntroDuchampFountainCOL.jpg


Nobody's going to spend any money on Paul McCarthy's NSFW "Tree" sculpture in Paris either. Still art though. Maybe not good art, but art nonetheless. You probably won't like the art, but I don't think there are too many people who would be totally ambivalent to it, having no reaction at all.

Another example of an artist that had no relation whatsoever to the art market that comes to mind is photographer Vivian Maier. She didn't intentionally sell her work or even show it to others during her lifetime. The photos were sold only because she failed to pay the rent for the storage unit where they were kept, shortly before she died. After her death, the people who'd bought the contents of the storage locker recognized what they had, promoted it, and her work became famous. Does that mean she wasn't an artist when she was alive simply because she never showed other people her work or sold any photos?

The quintessential examples though are the Lascaux cave paintings (and other neolithic works). Vibrant, amazing works, yet no market potential because there was no such thing as an art market when they were made.

If you make art, you're an artist. And art is art, regardless of whether or not it has any monetary value.
I hear you. Art is pretty much fully subjective and I understand that. If you're going to try to bring objectivity or measurability into it though it has to be done with something quantifiable is what i meant

A lot of what I was saying is free market principles, but if it fails to garner traction in the free market per se, it can still be appreciated as art via subjectivity and no limits, creativeness

Hunter-Biden-Art-Overpriced.jpg
Jp
 

Njyamadori

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I know this is my thread but I also want to answer it . Bonsai for me is totally an art medium and so for I’m technically the artist. I don’t have any “finished” trees but I still use my pre bonsai to show many beauty’s and expression . Bonsai allows the artists to sculpt their art in a way that the tree grows but the artist is in control of decisions and techniques.
 
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I know this is my thread but I also want to answer it . Bonsai for me is totally an art medium and so for I’m technically the artist. I don’t have any “finished” trees but I still use my pre bonsai to show many beauty’s and expression . Bonsai allows the artists to sculpt their art in a way that the tree grows but the artist is in control of decisions and techniques.
Yes. Pretty much this.
 

Njyamadori

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I hear you. Art is pretty much fully subjective and I understand that. If you're going to try to bring objectivity or measurability into it though it has to be done with something quantifiable is what i meant

A lot of what I was saying is free market principles, but if it fails to garner traction in the free market per se, it can still be appreciated as art via subjectivity and no limits, creativeness

View attachment 411347
Jp
All I have to say is how bad that painting is . I’m not a art critique but that’s such an unpleasing work of art with terrible composition.
 

Shogun610

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I hear you. Art is pretty much fully subjective and I understand that. If you're going to try to bring objectivity or measurability into it though it has to be done with something quantifiable is what i meant

A lot of what I was saying is free market principles, but if it fails to garner traction in the free market per se, it can still be appreciated as art via subjectivity and no limits, creativeness

View attachment 411347
Jp
That has to be a front.
 

StarGazer

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I know this is my thread but I also want to answer it . Bonsai for me is totally an art medium and so for I’m technically the artist. I don’t have any “finished” trees but I still use my pre bonsai to show many beauty’s and expression . Bonsai allows the artists to sculpt their art in a way that the tree grows but the artist is in control of decisions and techniques.
Hi Njamadori,

To me bonsai practice is a combination of art, science, and craftmaship.

From the creativity and aesthetic aspect, I personally think of it as 4D art. 3D as the classic depth, width, height dimensions, plus time; as trees are in constant flux. I like to look at my trees everyday and see them change as they develop, and as the seasons go by; like a long silent film, in which I direct the story, and with a healthy tree (or trees in bonsai forests), as the main character and co-creator.

In order to have healthy trees, and to select species that are interesting to me, I follow scientific principles of botany, plant and fungal biology and physiology, soil chemistry, genetics, etc.

Finally, there is the craft, which mainly from the Japanese tradition, books, blogs, and forums such as this one, which provide guidelines for species specific development, aesthetics, wiring, etc. which allow for the realization of the aesthetic idea.
 

ShadyStump

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Just throwing this out there to help break thought paradigms.

What does architecture qualify as?
Is it an art applying aesthetics to large structures?
Is it a science manipulating the relationships between natural forces, and the materials used?

Or is it craft?
 

Joe Dupre'

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I think I'm more on the artist side than the craftsman side. I want the tree to look like I want it to look, not like a tree in some book. It does take skill to do some of the operations to style a bonsai. This is the difference for me. If you are showing someone how to style a bonsai and they ask you "Why did you cut that branch?" and you can name a guideline or a rule of bonsai, then that is a craft. If they ask you that same question and you say "It needed to be cut." , that's art.
 

ShadyStump

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I think I'm more on the artist side than the craftsman side. I want the tree to look like I want it to look, not like a tree in some book. It does take skill to do some of the operations to style a bonsai. This is the difference for me. If you are showing someone how to style a bonsai and they ask you "Why did you cut that branch?" and you can name a guideline or a rule of bonsai, then that is a craft. If they ask you that same question and you say "It needed to be cut." , that's art.
I'll argue.
There was a conversation here a little while ago on whether you could learn creativity or if it was just innate in some people. I firmly believe that some people have an innate talent for creative work, but almost anyone can learn and develop creative skills.

Now, as you said, giving a reason based on some rule or other- maybe generally accepted concepts of visual balance, or traditional standards of presentation, etc.- you align with craft, while just doing it by feel is an art.
If creative thinking can be learned and developed, then getting, "a feel," for something versus having a reason is not the determining factor.

I mean is portraiture not an art?
Just because the person is recreating an image of the person in front of them, and thus has a reason for every motion, are they then automatically no longer an artist?
If so, then The Mona Lisa is not art, and Da Vinci was not an artist when he created it.

I'm no stickler for the rules or traditions of bonsai, but applying them for their own sake doesn't mean it isn't art.
 
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