How to appreciate the beauty of bonsai? An analysis of the latest methods
Everyone knows that a good pot of bonsai looks beautiful, but how do you appreciate it? As a work of art, how to appreciate bonsai is not a simple matter. It requires the viewer to have a certain level of thought, cultural and artistic cultivation, and life experience. As the saying goes: the layman watches the excitement, the expert watches the craft. Of course, the level of artistic cultivation is relative. To improve artistic cultivation, one needs to continuously accumulate aesthetic experience and also go through practical training. Appreciating bonsai is in fact the aesthetic appreciation of bonsai. The beauty of bonsai is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Natural beauty
Bonsai uses natural trees and rocks as its main materials, and among these the plants have the characteristic of life, so natural beauty is an important aspect of the beauty of bonsai.
The natural beauty of trees includes the beauty of the roots, trunk, branches and leaves, flowers and fruit, and the overall posture, as well as the beauty of color that changes with the seasons.
Roots:
Some tree roots are slightly exposed above the soil, giving a sense of solidity; there are also exposed-root styles where the roots rise above the soil, with the imposing force of a coiled dragon and crouching tiger; some have several roots linked together, forming a connected-root style; and some take root in crevices of stone, with the artistic conception of gripping the green mountain and never letting go. Therefore, in bonsai, there are artistic forms such as the exposed-root style, connected-root style, and rock-attached style, in which the roots are the main object of appreciation.
Trunk:
Although the main trunk of a tree has undergone artistic processing, it still retains the natural vigor and spirit of the tree. For example, a straight trunk is firm and upright, while a curved trunk is ancient and full of variety, each with its own characteristics. The bark may be old or young, some rough, some smooth, such as the bark of the black pine covered with scales, while bamboo plants are smooth and many-jointed, each rich in charm. The color of the trunk also varies, including black, grayish brown, yellowish brown, emerald green, purple-black, and so on. In addition, some half-withered trunks form a contrast with the flourishing branches and leaves, giving people the feeling of a withered tree meeting spring.
Leaves:
Leaf shapes differ according to tree species. There are needle-like, scale-like, ovate, fan-shaped, palmate, melon-seed-shaped, and also uniquely shaped leaves. Leaf texture may be hard or soft, thick or thin, leathery or papery. Leaf colors are even more richly varied, including dark green, light green, yellow-green, red, variegated edges, and variegated leaves.
Flowers and fruit:
The forms and colors of flowers are the most changeable. In flowering bonsai, common ones include azalea, broom flower, pomegranate flower, plum blossom, and so on, truly in a thousand shapes and a hundred postures. Fruit-viewing bonsai also come in many forms, such as firethorn fruit, tongfei fruit, Elaeagnus fruit, and bergamot fruit. The colors of the fruit are also very rich, including golden yellow, red, purplish red, yellow-green, and so on.
2. Overall beauty
The forms and colors of the roots, trunk, branches and leaves, flowers and fruit of a tree bonsai are organically combined to form the overall beauty of the tree scene.
(1) The beauty of seasonal change. The forms and colors of bonsai plants change with the four seasons. For example, in spring new buds spit out green, in summer branches are lush and leaves abundant, in autumn fruit is plentiful, and in winter branches and trunk are vigorous. As the tree ages, it gradually shows an ancient posture. Observing the growth process of trees and their changes through the four seasons is full of great appreciation interest.
(2) The natural beauty of rocks. The natural beauty of rocks mainly refers to their texture, shape, and color.
Texture: Rocks can be divided into hard and soft types. For example, Yingde stone and tree fossil stone are hard in texture, while sand-accumulated stone, sea-mother stone, and pumice are loose in texture, and the landscape scenes they express are each different.
Shape: The natural shapes of rocks include outer form and texture lines. In terms of outer form: there are peak-shaped ones, such as axe-cut stone; layered ones, such as thousand-layer stone; rounded ones, such as cobblestone; and jagged ones, such as Yingde stone. In terms of texture lines, there are axe-cut texture lines, such as in axe-cut stone; tangled-firewood texture lines, such as in reed-pipe stone; folded-belt texture lines, such as in thousand-layer stone; and also interwoven texture lines, such as in Yingde stone.
Color: Stone bamboo shoots are mostly bluish gray, tree fossil stone is mostly yellowish brown, axe-cut stone is mostly dark gray, and Xuan stone is mostly pure white. In bonsai expression, each has its strengths. For example, stone bamboo shoots are more suitable for expressing spring mountains, while Xuan stone is more suitable for expressing winter mountains.
3. The beauty of a painted scene
Although the modeling of Chinese bonsai draws on natural landscapes and trees, it does not mechanically imitate a specific blade of grass, a single tree, a single mountain, or a single stream. Rather, it highly summarizes and refines the scenery of mountains, waters, and trees in nature, and carries out artistic processing, making it into a diverse and unified layout with primary and secondary elements, foiling, gathering and scattering, density and sparseness, contrast, and correspondence, striving to reach an artistic realm that condenses the scenery of nature. The beauty produced after this natural scenery has been artistically processed is the beauty of a painted scene.
The beauty of a painted scene is an important aspect of the beauty of bonsai. Usually, when evaluating the quality of bonsai modeling art, the beauty of a painted scene is taken as one of the measuring standards. The beauty of a painted scene in bonsai can be expressed through different modeling styles. Chinese bonsai has a wide variety of modeling styles and schools. Mastering this aesthetic knowledge helps one appreciate the beauty of a painted scene in bonsai.
To express the beauty of a painted scene, various artistic techniques must be used, such as distinguishing primary and secondary, proper density and sparseness, mutual generation of emptiness and solidity, mutual use of cleverness and clumsiness, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, and hiding within the exposed, and so on. It must also be realized through certain technical methods, such as tree cultivation and pruning, wiring and shaping, and the carving, layout, and joining of rocks, and so on. Therefore, in order to further understand the beauty of a painted scene in bonsai, it is best to have some understanding of the relevant artistic and technical methods.
4. The beauty of artistic conception
As a work of art, bonsai should not only possess the beauty of a painted scene but also express a profound artistic conception, that is, it should enable people, while appreciating it, not only to see the scene but also, through the scene, to stir beautiful feelings, beautiful aspirations, and beautiful ideals, thereby producing rich associations and receiving feelings beyond the scene, reaching a state where the scene is finite but the meaning is endless.
The beauty of artistic conception has a very strong power to move people. It makes bonsai works thought-provoking and gives them a charm that one never tires of seeing. Because the creator of the bonsai has already blended their feelings into the composition during the creative process, when the viewer enters this artistic conception of beautiful feelings, aspirations, and ideals, they can achieve a resonance of thought and feeling with the bonsai creator.
Artistic conception is the highest realm of bonsai art. It is built on the basis of the painted scene, and the two permeate each other and are hard to separate. Artistic conception is sometimes also expressed with the help of inscriptions and poems on the bonsai, so appreciating bonsai also requires a certain literary cultivation.
In the creation of bonsai, the most difficult thing to express is the beauty of artistic conception, and in the appreciation of bonsai, what most requires aesthetic level is also the beauty of artistic conception. Take a pot of pine bonsai as an example. When we see its new leaves and old trunk, we are only appreciating its natural beauty. But when we see its upright trunk and vigorous branches and leaves, we are also appreciating its beauty of a painted scene. That is, from the vigorous and upright posture of the pine tree, we associate its character of fearing no storm and remaining faithful and unyielding, and thus receive spiritual encouragement. Only then have we appreciated its beauty of artistic conception. In particular, water-and-land bonsai are rich in content and diverse in scenery, and can better embody its poetic and picturesque beauty of artistic conception. In bonsai, associations with bonsai works vary from person to person and carry some subjective element, determined by factors such as the viewer's level of thought, artistic cultivation, and life experience. In bonsai, the depth of artistic conception does not entirely depend on the amount of scenery or the size of the scene. Sometimes, in a bonsai with very simple scenery and a very small scene, a profound artistic conception can also be expressed. For example, in a pot of water-and-land bonsai, several clumps of stone cave grass growing on sand-accumulated stone, placed in a water basin, and then dotted with a few small duck ornaments, can make the viewer associate the famous line that when the spring river warms the duck is the first to know, thereby making people feel the arrival of spring and a rich flavor of life.