If we are going to apply modern thinking to ancient art, we will never understand the art, be it from western history or the far east.
And I'm not saying I know much about the ancient Chinese.
But come on man! Are you really saying that Christians/Jews/Israelites (as represented by their art) believed that Eden was,
QuoteA garden...with a human purpose that imitates wilderness but lacks its substance
. That's just willfully absurd.
And what is the "substance" of the wilderness? What separates a garden from the wilderness? DEATH! In all of human history as represented by Art, the wilderness is death. And in fact, *All* of practical human history has been the effort to escape the wilderness. In all of human history nothing kills people more then nature, not war, not politics not religion. But you don't understand the connection between the garden and hope/faith/world-religions? You don't even have to study to see, just look. This is entirely the point of the Eden story.
The wilderness is death in western art, my hypothesis is that it is the same in ancient far eastern art in some way.
I promise you that if you search through the Art at the time Penjing was sort of new in China, and also the dominant religions of the time, there will be formal connections. And I am willing to bet that Penjing was a religious meditation on some idea of the natural world and some notion (or religious ideal) of some form of "Paradise", by whatever words they used to describe these things.
One last thought about Eden in relation to Penjing or even Bonsai. In the case of Eden, Eden was not destroyed after the fall. Rather two guards were placed at its gates. Suggesting that a future return to *paradise* would be possible. I find it remarkable that after Marco Polo, we do not find some form of Penjing practiced in old world European monasteries and other religious institutions, or in palaces of the "Christian" kings as we do formal gardens. But by some other name.
I am trying to find something that I can reasonably connect in European formal gardening, to China, via Marco Polo. Some sort of influence.
But I suspect that I will find some complaint about the focus on appearance over content as in the contemporary argument of aesthetics and beauty (the "religion" of the east would have had to be removed, leaving only the shell). Or some cultural race based impasse.
More likely if there is any influence, it will have been dissolved in some melting pot.
Off topic... I would like to see a reality show where people who love the wilderness but don't know anything about it have to go live in one for a year with nothing. I am sure the ratings will be gold when the first of these morons is eaten by a bear or dies from hypothermia or starvation. I have heard that bubonic plague can be found in armadillos in the south west... The wilderness is death and it wants to eat you, that is its only purpose. The garden is life. And that is the root of everything.
