Painting: New Chinese Ink Painting Definition by James Elkins

http://www.academia.edu/3344609/A_New_Definition_of_Chinese_Ink_Painting

by James Elkins


Illustration of new Chinese ink painting, exhibited in Shanghai.
Earth rubbing with ink - traditional rubbing technique with new source texture - earth texture.

Wang Nanming (born 1962) has made a large scale rubbings of a dried lake bed.
exhibited in Shanghai 2012.   
(Looks like a Chinese Ink Painting, but is not in essence considered as such by the author - even though the artist do paint Chinese Ink painting and writes about it too)

"...Chinese ink painting is a marginalized art form in contemporary art; it is minimally present in international exhibitions, which are more concerned with experimental art.  Despite recent surges in the market for Chinese art, ink painting is also economically less prestigious than other forms of contemporary Chinese art. 
This difference even appears in China itself where ink painting is often physically separated from other contemporary Chinese art in exhibitions; and in art academies, which continue to teach ink painting separately from Western oil and watercolor painting, sometimes in different buildings and with  different faculty and requirements. Redefining it without using visual criteria, and focusing instead on the depth, complexity, and historical density of the paintings’ references to the past, can open up an entirely new kind of conversation one more attentive to the continuing pressure exerted by history on the present."