Page 26 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2014Q3

know it in the West. Only after Japan’s ports were open
to the West, did the Japanese become aware of these
distinctions. Before the Meiji period, it was neither
known nor had the slightest importance. After contact
with the West, Japanese terms were coined for fine
arts and decorative arts. The words of Kimura: “I’m a
bonsai craftsman,” contains, along with his humility,
the traditional idea of not to care in the least in clas-

sifying bonsai.
Looking closely at Ryan’s work, I tried to understand
how he makes a harmonious whole with the beauty of
nature and the evocative power of the old trees, virile,
survivors of countless battles. The modernity of his
work is as though he has created a bridge connecting
the classic Japanese masculine aesthetic of masuraobi
(益荒男美), and his rugged, direct, highly emotional
and sensual style, to the abstract avant-garde of the
twentieth century—truly a global art!
I think it’s an art in tension towards the spiritual,
an inner necessity that always arrives in divergent in-
terpretations such as Kandinsky, the influential Rus-
sian painter and art theorist, when he declared that,
“Maximum realism is equal to maximum abstraction.”
Ryan’s bonsai trees have the awesome power of
the masterpieces of Kimura, it is an emotional ten-
sion looking for a contemporary artistic expression
through natural and perfect mastery of the technique.
A poetic conception of the tree as a gigantic individ-
uality that rises above all, with a trunk twisted and
shaken by powerful forces, supreme in its height and
large size. Like the trees painted by Cézanne, that rise
from the ground in dramatic fashion; the inclined
base leads to a very impressive aspect, the bare and

24 | BCI | July/August/September 2014