It is really thrilling when in someone’s bonsai work we can feel something of what sculptor Henry Moore said:
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Vitality and power of expression. For me, a work must first have a vitality of its own. I do not mean a reflection of the vitality of life, of movement, physical action, frisking, dancing figures and so on, but that a work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the object it may represent. When a work has this powerful vitality we do not connect the word Beauty with it.
Beauty, in the later Greek or Renaissance sense, is not the aim of my sculpture.
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
Because a work does not aim at reproducing natural appearances it is not, therefore, an escape from life – but may be a penetration into reality… an expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to greater effort in living.
