By ZHANG ZHAOHUI

Traditional ink painting, most famously represented by Xu Beihong's running horses, is familiar to anyone interested in Chinese culture. Also called literati painting, it is usually very descriptive and features the age-old themes of poetry and calligraphy. The meeting of East and West has now engendered a newer form, a melding of the ancient form with themes and techniques related to Western modernity. Modern ink painting is less concerned with color and has more abstract themes. It fits in somewhere between the abstract expressionist works of Dutchman De Kooning and American Jackson Pollock.

Ink-painting as an art term encompasses a wide variety of forms. They include national or "guohua," literati, abstract ink, new literati ink, experimental ink wash, and modern and conceptual ink painting. All are variations of the 1000-year-old art practice. Each has inspired fierce social and cultural debate over the issues of modernity and the legacy of tradition, East and West, and nationalism and colonialism.

Experimental ink painting can be broadly categorized into abstract ink painting, modern calligraphy, urban ink painting, and ink-as-medium installation and performance. Abstract ink painting practitioners concentrate on pure ink language, rather than its descriptive function. Modern calligraphers are developing a new form of visual art based on their traditional calligraphic training, but their works more resemble abstract ink painting, with only hints of calligraphy. Urban ink painting is a critical favorite. Its aim is to express the emotions of the physical world against a spiritual landscape within a transitional urban environment. Ink-related performance and installation works are generally on exhibit at large-scale, comprehensive contemporary art shows.

In the early 20th century, literati painting was criticized by leading progressive intellectuals Kang Youwei, a reformist dedicated to introducing modern Western political system into China, and Hu Shi, an advocate of cultural reforms. Both wanted a Western realist art revolution, and criticized literati art as "stagnating, corrupt, non-scientific and not concerning reality." Realist ink painting was extensively promoted by the propaganda system of the Communist Party of China during the 1930s and 1940s, and during the first decade of the PRC, ink painting was the tool used to portray the new vision of socialist China. Literati painting was viewed as "feudal trash."

After a relatively long period of integrating ink techniques with the Western realist approach, new national painting, or "xin guohua," reached its peak around 1980, becoming the most important art genre on the official mainstream stage. Its inherent relationship with the socialist political movement made xin guohua the official propaganda art form. During the 1980s the Chinese art world was inundated with Western art, and young artists rebelled against xin guohua, attempting to find compromise by combining traditional ink techniques with the Western modern aesthetic. These experimental inks are generally know as modern ink-and-water works, or "xiandai shuimo." Many of its practitioners were active in the New Wave Art Movement of the mid-1980s.

In 1985, based on belief that guohua was obsolete, young artist and critic Li Xiaoshan, a graduate student at Nanjing Art Institute, published an article declaring that the guohua was on its way out. His sharp rhetoric resulted in a broad and continuous debate over the fate of guohua, forcing some artists to reexamine their views of art and its relationship with tradition, reality and the impact of the West.

In the early 1990s, as the new art of political pop and cynical realism was gaining greater exposure outside China, the official Chinese establishment continued to promote guohua. This so-called "new literati painting" combined traditional techniques and personal sentiment. It was touted as a new version of a glorious tradition, largely in an attempt to contain the growing predominance of Western art. In the late 90s, with the loosening of ideological controls and growing nationalist patriotic sentiment, new literati ink-paintings were frequently exhibited. The relevant authorities encouraged exhibitions of experimental ink painting that also featured scholarly debate. These were attempts to develop a new language from obvious cultural roots, but the media construed the practice as bureaucratic corruption.

It is difficult to find a historical and geographic counterpart to ink painting in China's current art world. The orthodox art establishment regards guohua as a tool for maintaining its cultural purity, much like Peking Opera is preserved as the national opera to glorify its legacy. Some scholars see experimental ink art as a potential medium to communicate with the international art community, as well as to seek a new identity within contemporary Chinese art. Artists borrow from or refer to ink painting to compose their conceptual installations and performances, for example, Xu Bing's New English Classroom and Gu Wenda's on-site writing performance at the opening of the Kwangjun Biennial.

For many, ink painting is an integral part of the framework of traditional culture, and provides artists a huge space to explore. Mainland experimental ink painting practitioners believe that with the development of China's economy and cultural awareness, ink painting and other traditional arts will be rejuvenated. But there is still an undercurrent of negative and suspicious rhetoric, suggesting that ink painting fails to reflect contemporary feelings, and that it presents metaphysical ideas rather than developing an effective new narrative relating it to contemporary life.

Ink painting is nevertheless the most popular art form in China, practiced by millions of professional and amateur artists. Experimental ink painting is only a marginal part of this Chinese art world, but many artists and critics assume that it will play a crucial role in the process of establishing a new cultural identity. For serious artists, however, continuous exploration of the relationship between an ancient medium and a global culture should be one of the conditions for creating art.

ZHANG ZHAOHUI is pursuing a doctorate at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.