Withered lotus leaves float loosely on water. Snow is falling on the leaves and disappearing as it lands on the water's surface. This picturesque landscape cannot be found at a garden or park, but in a painting recently exhibited at Today Art Museum.

Created by Pan Gongkai, director of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, the ink painting cleverly combines Chinese traditional ink painting with multimedia technology. It is regarded by many insiders as an innovative one that could win international attention.

The exhibition is held against a global backdrop of increasing interest in contemporary ink paintings. Currently, Sotheby's and Christie's are both holding their first sales exhibitions of Chinese contemporary ink painting during Asia Week New York (March 15-23). To some insiders, the increasing attention might indicate a spring for today's Chinese ink painting in the international art market.

Growing attention

Long Meixian, adviser for Sotheby's Shuimo (Water Ink) exhibition, said that the collectors are interested in Chinese ink paintings and interest in contemporary ink paintings is increasing.

Christie's exhibition includes 25 pieces by nine famed contemporary artists. An expert with Christie's told reporters that it is Christie's first sales exhibition for ink paintings. He said the auction house means to establish a special category for Chinese contemporary ink paintings.

Actually, before the Asia Week, Christie's already held an exhibition of contemporary ink paintings in its Private Sales Gallery in New York in February, noting the potential commercial success of the 1000-year-old traditional Chinese style with a twist.

"They are working in a traditional medium, but in a very contemporary vernacular," Paul Johnson, a senior director for Christie's North America, once told AFP.

The attention is also growing domestically. While Pan Gongkai's exhibition is still ongoing at Today Art Museum, the National Art Museum of China opened a big exhibition of artist Yang Ermin's new ink paintings on March 15. Also, Today Art Museum revealed that they would establish a special exhibition hall for ink painting this year.

"As the West knows more and more about China and pays ever more attention to its contemporary art, it is natural for them to turn to ink painting - the root of Chinese painting," Pan told Global Times.

But Wang Chunchen, chief curator for Chinese Pavilion in the coming 55th Venice Biennale, said that it doesn't mean a shift of attention from Chinese contemporary art, but that the international art market widens the scope of interest to include ink painting.

Innovative touch

While ink painting becomes internationally popular, "they need to be innovated and changed to get more attention, comparatively speaking," Wang told Global Times.

Wang said that the innovations could be reflected in the medium, in the painting itself or in extending the scope of traditional ink paintings to other categories like installation art or performance art. "I think they are all innovations from ink painting, though there has been controversy about it."

He cited Pan's painting as an example. Pan used a special way to represent his works, giving the audience a different experience about Chinese ink painting.

Many artists are breaking with tradition in their works. For example, in an exhibition called Re-Ink in Hubei Museum of Art that ended early March, Fang Lijun's paintings show a merging with oil and ink painting. Gu Wenda and Xu Bing touched the audience with their installations that make ink paintings a three-dimensional experience.

Other artists like Li Jin use traditional brushwork to represent today's life, enlarging the scope of ink painting, which used to be mainly about flowers, birds and landscapes.

The works of artists like Gu Wenda, Li Jin and Liu Dan also appear in the Asia Week for their new interpretation of traditional ink paintings.

"In combining with contemporary art, it is important to make improvement in the painting itself and widen the topics for ink painting, adding in elements of modern society," Wang said.

Experimental phase

Chinese contemporary ink painting has been an important force in the development of the national art scene over recent decades. But there is no specific definition for it yet, though it has been widely regarded as a marriage between traditional Chinese ink painting and contemporary art.

The experiment on ink painting started in the 1980s with China's reform and opening-up, and it continues to this day. Today's ink painting artists are said to be absorbing nutrients from Western art to enrich the traditional painting.

The relationship is clearly demonstrated in Pan's Snow Melting in Lotus. He explained that the falling "snowflakes" are actually letters from one of his thesis about the influence of Western conceptual art on Chinese art.

"They fall on the lotus leaves (a common element of traditional Chinese paintings), which indicates a kind of erosion, because the lotus fears cold," Pan said, "Meanwhile, the snowflakes fall into the water as nutriment to make the lotus grew better."

Due to its link with both traditional ink painting and contemporary art, the piece is put in an awkward position for blurring the line. There have been diversified opinions about it. According to Wang, some contemporary ink paintings are not regarded as ink paintings at all for drifting too far from tradition and being too avant-garde.

The voices vary also about the bottom line. While there are artists replacing their brush with a needle head or painting without ink, Pan regarded brush, ink and Chinese paper as the bottom line: "There are various means to represent modernity in a painting, but I will stick to the bottom line."

Pan noticed that traditional Chinese painting is in a prime period of development, with an increasing number of artists, works, as well as exhibitions. "But it is not deep enough," he said, "It lacks depth in both studying the tradition and in grasping global context."

Meanwhile, people remain conservative about the market for new ink. Michael Kahn-Ackermann, former head of the Goethe-Institute China, said that since ink painting doesn't belong to Western art, it faces a complicated situation as a uniquely Chinese understanding of art, which means it needs time to gain a foothold in the international market.