Page 21 - BSAM 2018 Q2

but it is the whole that matters and that is why it is the most difficult to do. Even its container and table must be very refined, evocative and delicate. For bunjin, the Japanese began using the lids from namban jars, which were very poor in appearance.
The ideal image sought by the Chinese derives from the Taoist philosophy, and is not exactly the same as the concept of WABI-SABI from which the Japanese aesthetic of beauty emerges. Moreover, in Japan there are also two main currents, the first around the tea ceremony and the second linked to the spirit of Zen. The search for the beauty of emptiness, that is simpli- fication, is the bunjin beauty that is typical of Japan, it belongs to the Zen taste and culminates in making this characteristic in the shape of the bonsai. In this sense the beauty of Japanese culture is a beauty of taking away. In China, in the Ming dynasty, we meet the pinnacle of the intellectual maturation of these sublime men: refined, intelligent people, lovers of reading and culture, painters, calligraphers, masters of the good taste, lovers of eremitical life. They are people
Top; Class A bonsai are rare, such as the Tooryuunomai Dragon by Masahiko Kimura, which is immeasurable, that is to say the maximum of aesthetic possibilities, a real rarity.
Bottom; After the work by Alessandro Bonardo based on a drawing by Masahiko Kimura.
The genius of the design in the second drawing that he advised be performed—even if unusual and difficult to accept—is precisely the exaltation of the wabi- sabi aspect of the bonsai.
Kimura thinks il Pellegrino is my most beautiful bonsai!
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