The Art of Bonsai Project

The problem I have with Penjing is the fact the the followers and devotees of this discipline have not done as the Japanese have done and that is define what makes it tick. Whether it is a set of rules of form, a spiritual interpretation, or a combination of other esoteric concepts, trying to understand Penjing in the way we can understand bonsai is a difficult pursuit. It all seems to boil down to what is mentioned above; Penjing is less stylistically defined than bonsai.

OK--Why?

Vance,

It is not true at all of what you say.
For people have not travel to China to see their "penjing" exhibition or not to visit their private collection, hardly can see the high quality penjing.

Most of people just have seen penjing from the old book and not many good penjing are exposed to the world because they are not communicating so much outside the world especially on the internet.

Chinese penjing has developped and improved amazingly in the last 5 years and in certain characteristic extend, they have the same sense of technical dicipline and artistry as what we do in "bonsai". The quality fact of Chinese penjing now is much far beyond of most of the outside world have ever known.

I am now writing my third book " The Five Schoolars of Chinese Penjing" to give better understanding of Chinese penjing because not much of such information available in English.

Please also read my article :
http://knowledgeofbonsai.org/robert_steven/

This new book I look forward to. As I said; my problem with Penjing is not that I don't like the form, but the amount of information about the hows and whys of Penjing are seriously lacking. A person interested in bonsai has what amounts to a library of material about all aspects of bonsai from soil to style and the spiritual stuff in between. We do not as yet have that about Penjing.

Exactly Vance.

One of the reason is the different way of appreciation to art between the Chinese and western. Chinese is using sense to express the aesthetic principals, sometimes very abstract and ones need to understand the language and culture well in order to understand the essence; while the western is using logic as descriptable science.

That's why not many literatures about this available in English because it is very difficult or almost impossible to translate. The Chinese use ONLY 8 words to explain the principals of negative space in composition, and we need half page to explain; otherwise, the literary translation will sound absurd.

There had been 3 publishers in China tried to translate my first book "Vision of My Soul" into Chinese, but no one came out with result. The reason was difficult to find one could speak well English, doing bonsai or penjing and had artistic background in order to use the right term.

I speak the language, but not good enough to do the Chinese translation; I do better in "translating" the Chinese into English. That's why I am writing my 3rd book about penjing. Hope fully will come out next year.

Good luck to you, I hope to see it soon.

Vance, how do you think abou this idea :
http://artofbonsai.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 3547#13547

I think it is a wonderful idea filled with wonderful ideas. It will be a great experience for those who can afford it. I would go if I could.

Thanks Vance, we will start working on this program. Please let us know if you have any suggestion assuming you will join....

Robert,

If you only put half of your talent in it, this book should still be a real hit. That's because there is a great void in the literature about Chinese Penjing, and because penjing is gaining a lot of popularity in the bonsai community. With all the misunderstanding that is going on, you can put it in the right perspective, once and for all.

Besides Karin Albert (who is doing a great job, by the way), Chinese Penjing is lacking a great ambassador to the world, a public figure like you. Bonsai has many great ambassadors, but Penjing has few. You could break some new grounds here, with a nice book. That's because you could not only talk about the concepts, but also provide illustrations of it. This is the problem with the Penjing literature today: there is some great talk about the concepts, but people have no idea how to put them into practice. There is no one who can illustrate those concepts with practical work. You may be the only one who can do this, because you have the ability to understand both the Chinese concepts, and talk to the minds of the West.

Sincerely,
Attila

One of my friends is practising bonsai that are not typically Japanese, maybe more Chinese isnpired - maybe Penjing?

What do you think, Robert i.e. ...?

Juniperus horisontalis and Ulmus parviflora
by Johnny Eslykke.

Regards
Morten Albek