Bonsai aesthetics
Like the type of aesthetic rules that govern, for example, Western common practice period music, bonsai's guidelines help practitioners work within an established tradition with some assurance of success.
[2]: 3–1 In their simplest and most common application, styles provide a form of shorthand description for bonsai specimens.
These competing influences ensure that the style system acts mostly as a creative aid, not a dominating constraint, in producing a finished bonsai.
The main aim of bonsai aesthetic practices is to create miniature trees with an air of age in their overall shapes, proportions, and details.
Alternatively, the tree will not be shown until the scar has been covered by years of bark growing over it, or a stub of the branch will remain to be cleaned and shaped into looking like it was broken by wind or lightning.
Similarly, wiring should be removed or at least concealed when the bonsai is shown, and must leave no permanent marks on the branch or bark.
One or more of the accepted rules of bonsai form can be bent or broken for a particular tree without destroying its fundamental aesthetic and artistic impact.
In fact, going beyond the prescribed rules allows aesthetic growth in the bonsai art, as seen in many of the masterpieces created by Masahiko Kimura[4] and Kunio Kobayashi.
It is a sense of physical weight, the illusion of mass, the appearance of maturity or advanced age, and the elusive quality of dignity.
Many of the formal rules of bonsai help the grower create a tree that expresses wabi or sabi, or portrays an aspect of mono no aware.
In some cases this aesthetic technique will vary, as in a birch tree bonsai attaining the white colour and exfoliating bark of a mature specimen.
[7] Radial symmetry is nearly always broken by the requirement for a clear "front", which exposes the tree's trunk and major branches.
For example, a bonsai's leaves might be allowed to attain full size for many years in order to encourage vigor and growth of trunk, roots, and branches.
Leaf reduction may be encouraged by pruning and is sometimes achieved by the total defoliation of a bonsai during one part of its growing season.
The presence of deadwood is not as common as most of the other points mentioned here, but can be used very effectively on selected tree species and bonsai styles.
