Modern ink painting originated in the early 1980s and was active in the middle and late 1990s. Now it has become a trend that cannot be ignored in the field of Chinese painting. Traditional ink painting has three functions: cognition, education and aesthetics. Although this view of art is out of date, it is still a dogma in art textbooks in colleges and universities. Before the Qing Dynasty, ink painting had obvious cognitive function and a set of self-contained symbolic language. People can imitate ink painting before Ming and Qing dynasties by copying symbolic lines and strokes in the model. In the era when Confucian culture dominated the whole country, the literati influenced by traditional Taoist Confucianism lived in a feudal society with dynasties changing and officialdom ups and downs. Although they have the ideal of "serving the country and saving the world", they do not have the ability of "making a successful career", so that they have no choice but to retire to the mountains or escape into an empty door, and take the literati ethics of "not drifting with the tide" and the spirit of "doing nothing" as comfort, so that painters can only pass.
Traditional ink painting techniques are based on calligraphy art, that is, the so-called thinking mode of "painting and calligraphy are homologous", which determines the inherent lack of interest in ink painting techniques. Modern ink painting seems to be a historical subversion of traditional ink painting. As an active social phenomenon, it quickly established a symbol system. We might as well divide the existing artistic symbols into meta-symbols, symbolic symbols, geometric symbols and expressive symbols. Facing the traditional ink painting method and secular culture, the modern ink painting author questioned and sublated the traditional ink painting with the "passion" of daring to oppose the tradition after calm meditation and sober choice. Let the creators of modern ink painting face the current social and cultural problems through painting. Because of this, contemporary ink painting works are different from the spiritual form of poverty and powerlessness in traditional Chinese painting, but they can face life firmly, ask about the world, consider the value and pursue the truth.