When I thought about breaking the rules, Jackson Pollock came to mind. Sure, there were the impressionists from the 19th century that were moving away from the traditional style of painting, but nobody was quite as thorough as Pollock at breaking ALL the rules of painting.
"By the mid 1940s, Jackson Pollock introduced his famous 'drip paintings', which represent one of the most original bodies of work of the century, and forever altered the course of American art. At times the new art forms could suggest the life-force in nature itself, at others they could evoke man's entrapment - in the body, in the anxious mind, and in the newly frightening modern world."
Personally, I feel that there is some similarities between his creative process and that of Chinese ink works, for his works are, as he puts it,
"Energy and motion made visible - memories arrested in space." Jackson Pollock
Convergence, 1952, 93.5 inches by 155 inches (237.49 by 393.7 cm), Oil on canvas
http://www.jackson-pollock.org/convergence.jsp#prettyPhoto
http://www.albrightknox.org/collection/collection-highlights/piece:pollock-convergence/
