From: Roger Snipes

Chris,
Your post regarding the alteration of a work of art brings to mind a
discussion that took place on the list a few years ago.

Someone asked if once a bonsai, Goshin for example, became part of a
public
collection does the curator have an obligation to maintain the original
artist's design and direction, or is he free to change it at will?

Some felt that the curator should maintain the tree as designed, while
others felt it could be changed and redesigned as the curator saw fit.
Personally I feel that the curator of a collection has an obligation to
keep
to the original artist's design. After all, what would be the point of
having a composition like Goshin in a public collection, and then
redesigning it to suit someone else's artistic vision? (Obviously, a
living
work of art will need constant maintenance, but the original design intent
can be maintained.) One might compare that to doing a major repaint on
the
Mona Lisa to improve the painting. :-)

Hi Roger,
I am glad to see you pick this up, and I do recall some of the past
posts, as you did.
Chris has had experience in close quarters with these situations, so
I am curious how it may look to him, and what he knows of it.
There is a lot in the arts of changes from the original, each time
a necessary or a natural part of the whole, so I really wonder how Bonsai
stacks up with it.
I mean changes such as in plays where the playwriter's words stay
exact, but the action of a character can make them imply different content.
Still, it holds together.
Same in music, the quality of the original might alter from
orchestra to orchestra. I am not sure of that, but I think it is happening.
There are renovations of old paintings that are on the second
renovation with more advanced techniques found to be "less" than the
original and then claimed to be returned to their original more closely,
some of those recently.
I am inclined to think paintings or photographs would be harder to
withstand some alteration for any reason other than loss of some original
part altogether.
Somehow someone must have had a reasonable solution for bonsai,
since it could be that a restyle was necessary in some instances.
Lynn

Lynn Boyd, Oregon, USA

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