A bonsai enthusiast's reflection: Naturalistic styling is the only way forward for bonsai innovation

[Bonsai Enthusiast's Reflections]

Text by @Zhou Yingzhi, Xiamen, Fujian

Water, flat as a mirror, with clouds and moon reflected within, content and at ease. Water, with a calm and light spirit, flows gently onward, softly sidestepping any obstacle, never taking offense, calm in heart and light in flow, naturally unhindered. Clouds, free and easy, drift in the sky, relaxed and graceful, not minding whether they stay or go, drifting over mountain peaks and across oceans, leaving no trace behind, free and serene. In life, when you calm your heart, it is a placid pool of water; when you lighten your heart, it is a carefree cloud.

[Bonsai Masters' Forum]

Naturalistic styling is the only way forward for bonsai innovation

Author | Flowers & Bonsai

This article is selected from the Flowers & Bonsai website, and the copyright belongs to the original author

In the past, bonsai-making among the Chinese people mostly followed tradition, dominated by formalized styling, with a strong craftsmanlike flavor, obvious traces of artificial workmanship, works similar in form and lacking novelty. Influenced by the literati bonsai of the past and contemporary naturalistic bonsai, people's aesthetic concepts and tastes have changed greatly today, and the desire to return to nature has grown stronger. Bonsai, as an art form expressing natural beauty, to some extent precisely meets the psychological needs of modern people. Therefore, naturalistically styled bonsai has become the mainstream of bonsai creation in China. Naturalistic bonsai works with innovation and individuality are increasingly loved by people, fully demonstrating the new achievements in the development of China's bonsai cause today. For example, among pine bonsai works, the naturalistic tall-trunk, weeping-branch pine bonsai "Towards the Horizon" (Figure 14-1) and "The Brushwork of Liu Songnian" (Figure 14-2) created by Hu Leguo and Pan Zhonglian.

They take nature as their teacher, neither pursuing short, stout, bizarre tree material, nor bending the tree material into three curves and nine twists. After their pruning, wiring and condensation, the styling still retains a tall trunk (straight or curved) framework, vigorous and upright, imposing in bearing, with a varied tree form and verdant needles. Its masculine beauty expresses the natural nature and spiritual style of the pine, giving people a positive, upward strength. Hu Leguo's new pine work "Song of Treading" (Figure 14-3) still insists on using this naturalistic style of tree material with twin towering trunks, natural turns, and leaning, slanting momentum. The undulating branches, after styling and combing, have unity within variation, showing not a trace of artificial workmanship. Its external form neither repeats himself nor repeats others, making it a fine work in the innovation of naturalistic pine bonsai forms.

What is gratifying is that in recent years, a new form has appeared in pine bonsai creation, namely the mountain pine bonsai represented by Han Xuenian (Figure 14-4, Figure 14-5). He uses the mountain pine (Masson's pine) unique to Guangxi as his material. The trunk of this mountain pine differs from the common pine form, being slender and with many curved variations. The author is good at using this material, applying techniques according to the material, and working hard on the styling of branches, trunk and roots. Through careful pruning and cultivation, he retains the most beautiful parts of the trunk and branches, highlighting the changes in length, squareness and roundness, and pauses and turns of the trunk and branches. Although artificially wired, the lines and turns of the trunk and branches are natural, as if splashed out with a painting brush, yielding firmness within softness, possessing the rhythmic beauty and metrical beauty of Chinese cursive script, expressing an inner strength. This kind of "cursive-script-style" bonsai is uniquely distinctive, full of wild charm, highly individual, and refreshing to the eye. Compared with the pine bonsai of Pan Zhonglian and Hu Leguo, although the style is entirely different, it achieves the same effect by different means; both are innovative fine works in naturalistic pine bonsai.

On the contrary, some pine bonsai seek only shortness and sturdiness, with very small gaps between branches, showing only needles and no blank space or framework, and finally can only crowd into a clump, forming a large mushroom of similar appearance, unable to be created further (Figure 14-6). This shows that because naturalistic bonsai has no fixed model, creating tall-trunk, weeping-branch pine bonsai works with individuality is more difficult than making formalized bonsai. But naturalistic bonsai provides broad space for innovation, and this point is beyond doubt.

The trunks of deciduous-tree bonsai are mostly collected from mountains and wilds, with naturally varied forms, while the branches are mostly artificially shaped. In the deciduous-tree bonsai seen at present, the branches are mostly flat-spreading, and each tree mostly has one trailing branch or one drooping branch; the external form composed of branches is mostly triangular, and the phenomenon of similar forms is widespread. Truly individual and innovative naturalistic deciduous-tree bonsai include Lu Xueming's red-fruit bonsai "Blushing Face Dancing Waist" (Figure 14-7), Wu Chengfa's bougainvillea bonsai "Clouds Hanging, Branches Heavy, Purple Makes Shade" (Figure 14-8), and others. They all revere nature, use the Lingnan technique of "storing branches and truncating trunks," and pursue a natural style. Special mention must be made here of the dynamic bonsai such as "The Wind Roars" and "Autumn Thoughts" created by He Gansun, which break the traditional model, seize the instantaneous image of a tree battling the wind in nature, and fix it in a styling of tree and stone as one. As soon as this new form appeared, it was praised by people, and for a time was imitated by many. Later, because there were too many similar works, this new form gradually fell out of favor. But his contribution to promoting bonsai innovation in China cannot be denied.

He Gansun's bonsai "The Wind Roars"

He Gansun's bonsai "Autumn Thoughts"

In water-and-land bonsai, there is Zhao Qingquan's "Listening to the Waves" (Figure 14-9). In tree-and-stone bonsai, there is He Gansun's "Return" (Figure 14-10). They draw nourishment from nature and life, with novel styling, as if made by heaven, full of poetic and pictorial charm, injecting new vitality into water-and-land bonsai and tree-and-stone bonsai. There is also Zhang Yi's landscape bonsai "Dream Talk by the Inkstone Edge? Moon Mountain Wild Wind Lone Green" (Figure 14-11), which, whether in content or in form, distances itself from the customary formulaic methods (such as every pot's mountains being one large and one small, one high and one low). He uses the laws of formal beauty and the compositional techniques of modern craft design, and uses a self-made curved polygonal pot, summarizing mountain stones, trees, ornaments and so on into points, lines and planes for combined styling, making the scenery novel in form, concise in structure, expanded in space, and rich in life interest in the picture, forming an artistic style different from others.

Most of the innovative works introduced above come from the hands of masters or famous people. Fine works by the broad mass of bonsai creators innovating in form also often appear. For example, the cypress bonsai created by Bian Hai fully uses some undesirable, poorer-condition materials, applying techniques according to the material, showing ingenuity in form and deliberately innovating. When dealing with shari (deadwood trunks), he pays attention both to conciseness and overall sense, and to handling the relationship with branches and leaves well, so that each can fully display its own beauty. Each of his works neither repeats others in form nor repeats himself, and is very novel, such as his Chinese juniper (Figure 14-12). There is also his forest-style bonsai "One Tree Becomes a Forest" (Figure 14-13a, Figure 14-13b, Figure 14-13c, Figure 14-13d), which was converted from an ordinary five-needle pine. What is commendable is that his creative thinking is flexible, and he dares to break convention, laying the trunk of the five-needle pine horizontally as the expressive angle, changing the horizontally growing branches to vertical, and making it into a forest-style bonsai (at present, the perfection of the form of the branches and trunk and their mutual relationship still needs time). The innovative spirit he shows in creation, not bound by formulas and daring to explore in form, is worthy of affirmation.

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