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Bonsai Art and Subjectivism

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bonsaikc

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Hi! I joined here some time ago and just lost track of the forum, so I'm glad to be back.

I am also having a bit of difficulty with a forceful Subjectivist movement in the bonsai community.

There is a group who insist that bonsai is art (which I suppose it can rise to, if done well enough). This group is also insisting that subjectivism is the only way to understand art.

http://artofbonsai.org/feature_articles/thoughts.php

http://www.artofbonsai.org/forum/viewtopic...f=22&t=2584

I haven't had the pleasure of reading The Romantic Manifesto yet, but it is now next on my list. My difficulty, however, is translating the ethical reasoning of Objectivism into concrete refutation of the folly in these kinds of posts. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

Thanks for your help!

Chris Johnston

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I think bonsai is beautiful and amazing and takes some time to master. But it is still "gardening." One might even consider it "decorative art," but not fine art as Rand characterizes it - as the "selective re-creating of reality according to the artists metaphysical value judgments." Primarily because it is not a recreation of reality. A selective filtering, or maybe directing of natural process to a changed end, yes, but not a recreation.

Can you highlight some particular passages that you think express this idea?

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Can you highlight some particular passages that you think express this idea?

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking for. Here are a couple of passages which show the extreme subjectivism with which I am trying to deal:

Walter Pall-"Thoughts about Viewing Bonsai"

Schopenhauer has said that one has to approach a piece of art like a person of high level. That means that one has to humbly wait until one is approached for communication. The energies that the artist put into his piece, reveal themselves to the viewer who relaxes completely and who puts his will aside. According to modern results of brain research one can also say that the relaxed viewer sets his left side of the brain (his will) to rest and admires the piece of art as it is with the right side, without putting critique in words immediately...

For the viewer of a bonsai it is not helpful to stand in front of the tree and try hard to understand it, to penetrate it with his mind. It works much better if he stands in front of it and lets it sink in without preconditions. The viewer should casually feel that he has found these forms, these colors, as if he had created this bonsai.

The naïve viewer has an advantage. He does not have the handicap of intellectual reflexions. His prejudices are not deep. He has fewer demands, is more occupied with looking.

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I think bonsai is beautiful and amazing and takes some time to master. But it is still "gardening." One might even consider it "decorative art," but not fine art as Rand characterizes it - as the "selective re-creating of reality according to the artists metaphysical value judgments." Primarily because it is not a recreation of reality. A selective filtering, or maybe directing of natural process to a changed end, yes, but not a recreation.

Can you highlight some particular passages that you think express this idea?

I agree that most bonsai would be categorized as decorative art, but there are those that transcend this characterization. Here are three that would most certainly meet an Objectivist definition of art:

I suppose my greatest challenge is the mystical worship of "talent" to the detriment of skill and technique, as well as the vague wanderings about "feelings" and "communication" of the work with the viewer. It's all quite silly and even a little blatant.

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How I look at it:

Bonsai plants in nature are to be admired because of the struggle to survive, to live under the harshest conditions. A symbol of tenacity and heroism. They are not necessarily very handsome to look at.

Many centuries ago oriental royalty and Buddhist monks started to intentionally cripple trees to have miniature gardens and trees. They can have forms that are very graphic, they can even evoke emotions within us as art does. But they are a recreation of suffering. The sense of life is one full of pain, not joy in existence, a reflection of the belief that life on earth is only to be endured, for in the distance, once the earthly body has been shed awaits the wonderful and real life.

It is amazing how you can twist living things into dwarfism. It very much reminds me of the past Chinese custom where the feet of the female were bound and crippled.

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How I look at it:

Bonsai plants in nature are to be admired because of the struggle to survive, to live under the harshest conditions. A symbol of tenacity and heroism. They are not necessarily very handsome to look at.

Many centuries ago oriental royalty and Buddhist monks started to intentionally cripple trees to have miniature gardens and trees. They can have forms that are very graphic, they can even evoke emotions within us as art does. But they are a recreation of suffering. The sense of life is one full of pain, not joy in existence, a reflection of the belief that life on earth is only to be endured, for in the distance, once the earthly body has been shed awaits the wonderful and real life.

It is amazing how you can twist living things into dwarfism. It very much reminds me of the past Chinese custom where the feet of the female were bound and crippled.

This is a common misconception based on a lack of understanding of horticultural and artistic technique. Bonsai do not all recreate suffering.

At their best, bonsai reflect the values of their creators: even the most contorted tree collected from the wild shows the strength to adapt and overcome the most difficult of circumstances. The best bonsai artists attempt to tell the tree's story rather than their own. I would wager that there are no really well-known objectivist bonsai artists, but at the same time I would love to combat the ideas that art is totally subjective and must be approached with the reason and intellect turned off.

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  • 4 months later...

A bonsai is a craft - it has aesthetics, like all good craft, but no, it is not 'fine art'... since the Greek origin of 'art' means 'skill of mind in making' [see Bowra, The Greek Experience], it could be considered art in the same sense as cooking...

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