Several views on the beauty of ornamental stone bonsai, do you know them all?
China is one of the world's four great ancient civilizations, with a long history. In 1977, archaeologists excavated a piece of pottery painted with potted plants at the Hemudu Neolithic site (over 6000 years ago) in Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province. The image shows a plant with five leaves growing inside a pot.
In the Eastern Han dynasty tomb wall paintings in Wangdu County, Hebei Province, there is an image of potted flowers; six red flowers are planted in a round pot, and beneath the pot is a square stand, forming an artistic image that integrates the plant, the pot and the stand as a trinity, as shown in Figure 1-1. This painting from more than 1700 years ago is extremely similar to today's bonsai, and it can be said that this is the predecessor of bonsai.
During the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, Xiao Zixian of the Liang dynasty recorded in the Book of Southern Qi: "Mount Kuaiji Shan Yin carved stone mountain, traditionally named for it." This says that the carved stone mountain craftwork produced in Kuaiji Shan Yin was praised by people and was very famous. From this record we can see that the landscape bonsai of this period had already developed to a certain degree. As for the origin era of bonsai, opinions vary, and there is still no conclusion.
The aesthetic concept of bonsai. In books about bonsai, bonsai beauty, root art beauty, natural beauty, stone appreciation beauty, artistic beauty, etc. are often mentioned, but what exactly is beauty? It seems no one has ever discussed it systematically. In fact, before studying bonsai aesthetics, root art aesthetics, and stone appreciation aesthetics, one should first answer the basic concept and basic theoretical question of "what is beauty." Since beauty is the most core aesthetic concept and the most important aesthetic category, the definition of beauty is a basic theoretical question in aesthetics.
(1) Several views on beauty. A. Those who believe that beauty is objective existence such as labor, life, struggle, image, contradiction, attributes of things, typicality, nature and form, etc., their error lies in equating the concept of beauty with beautiful things, or equating beauty with the source of beauty (the source of beauty), confusing the two (that is, beauty = source of beauty). Therefore they regard beauty as an objective thing that does not depend on human will, which is actually answering the wrong question. They are equivalent to denying that beauty belongs to ideology, to the category of the secondary. Obviously, this is a misunderstanding of the definition of beauty.
B. Beauty is the manifestation of the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. This was proposed by Mr. Zhu Guangqian, but how is this "unity" achieved? In the end he still located beauty in the "image of things" or in artistic characteristics, and ultimately did not jump out of the trap that beauty is objective existence. In this way, his discussion that beauty is secondary and ideological is self-contradictory. Therefore, Mr. Zhu's definition of beauty carries an eclectic tone and gives people a specious impression. "Beauty, if one is to find an ideal for it, must not be empty, but must be beauty determined by a concept with objective purposiveness." (Kant)
C. Those who believe that beauty is pleasure, their error lies in regarding only perceptual beauty as the whole of beauty, and their understanding of beauty remains only at the perceptual stage, committing the error of empiricism. Therefore they lack understanding of or hold a negative attitude toward the experience of others and humanity's experience of beauty as well as the laws of beauty.
D. The view that beauty is idea, rational form, or that beauty is created by God belongs to metaphysics and idealism. Beauty is a realm of meaning. As far as Chinese poetry and painting are concerned, it has some correct elements, but its scope is too narrow and fails to summarize the full meaning of beauty. The so-called "artistic conception," which also refers to "mental realm," is spoken of relative to "material realm" and "form realm," namely the objective world. Therefore the so-called "artistic conception" actually refers to the ideal realm within the subject's heart, but when this ideological realm is influenced by the outside world and resonates, artistic conception is produced. The representation of the characteristics of artistic conception in bonsai art is usually elaborated from the aspect of artistic expression, while the analysis of bonsai aesthetics has the characteristic of making a rational summary from the internal connections of related concepts such as the representation of artistic conception and other characteristics. E. Like the deification theorists, agnostics push people's understanding of beauty into a dead end.
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