A New Definition of Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting James Elkins [Note to readers: this essay was commissioned, edited, paid, and then rejected by Mike Hearn, for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013. A shorter version was given at the conference “Back to the Region: An International Conference Ink Painting and Art History,” organized by Qigu Jiang and Lao Zhu, Zhu Qizhan Art Museum, Shanghai, May 2012. Paintings by Jiang Qigu, Jiang Zhen!en, Zhuang Yalun, and Wang Nanming are used by permission; the others are thumbnails "om the Metropolitan Museum exhibition and references can be found in their catalog. Please send a# comments to the author at jameselkins@fastmail.fm.] Chinese ink painting is the oldest continuously practiced method of image making that includes historians, critics, and historiographers. While some forms of Western artistic practice have been ongoing since the Greeks, Chinese ink painting has existed at least since the Tang dynasty (618–907), even though it can be traced much farther back. As a result of the dual practice of making images and writing about them, Chinese ink painting has arguably the largest number of schools, styles, and techniques of any practice. 1 Despite this 1 1 I argued this point in my Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). This book was originally published in Chinese as Xi Fang Mei Shu Shi Xue Zhong de Zhon!uo Shan Shui Hua ( Hangzhou: Zhon!uo Mei Shu Xue Yuan Chu Ban She, 1999), but the English edition is fully revised.