At beijingkids we’re always keen to let you know about opportunities to share quality art with your kids, whether it’s contemporary work or celebrated classics. After all, there’s more to life than smartphones and shopping malls. So an exhibition of work by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci and his circle should be a definite recommendation. Only 17 works worldwide are confidently attributed to the hand of Leonardo, and to have two of them in Beijing would be a real coup.

But there’s a catch. The exhibition, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) until December 8, has been accused of presenting fakes. This criticism may be accused of cultural snobbery from westerners (and your correspondent had a previous run-in with CAFA when I wrote a piece for our sister publication The Beijinger, in which I not-entirely-frivolously described a work on display there by a CAFA professor as “the worst painting in the world ever.”) However the claims have come from Chinese art experts, and have been reported by state publications China Daily and Global Times.

At the heart of the controversy is Nicola Barbatelli, director of the Museo delle Antiche Genti di Lucania, who claimed to have discovered a lost Leonardo self-portrait, known as the “Lucan Portrait”. Who painted it and whom it represents are still hotly debated in the art world, though supporters point to fingerprint evidence and what may be Leonardo’s writing on the back. The Lucan Portrait is one of the works exhibited, as is a Mary Magdalene generally accepted as the work of Leonardo and one of his students.

A painting of Mary Magdalene, by Leonardo da Vinci and a pupil

However You Yong, an influential art blogger, took to Weibo to blast the quality and authenticity of the other works on display.

“This exhibition is a blatant mockery of Da Vinci, his times, and the general public. The showpieces fail to convincingly support the theme, and they are a revelry of fake paintings and imitations,” he said.

The response from CAFA was measured and careful.

“Controversies surrounding epic paintings are not rare in the world. For example, industry insiders are still bickering about who is the real painter of the Song Dynasty landscape scroll, A Thousand Lis of Mountains and Rivers,” Zhang Zikang, director of the CAFA Art Museum, told China Daily. “In recent years, studies on Da Vinci in Italy and other places in the world have been revolving around his great artistic genius. However, after I viewed the exhibition, what impressed me was that Da Vinci is a great artist, but not a great teacher, as his paintings are far better than his students’. This discovery affords modern education a salutary lesson,” Zhang commented.

If you want to judge for yourself, then admission to the gallery is a very reasonable RMB 15 (RMB 10 concessions), children under 120cm are free, and there are several other exhibitions currently on display.

Leonardo and His Outstanding Circle, till Dec 8

All ages. RMB 15 (RMB 10 concessions, free under 120cm). Tuesday-Sunday, 9.30am-5.30pm (last ticket sale 5pm). CAFA Art Museum. No. 8 Hua Jia Di Nan Street, Chaoyang District. (6477 1575) www.cafamuseum.org/en. 朝阳区花家地南街8号.

Photos: Nico Barbatelli via Wikimedia Commons, chinadaily.com.cn

A house where people can climb walls, a swimming pool that won’t get you wet, and a floating hutong house… these are just a few of the optical illusions and visual paradoxes enveloped in Leandro Erlich’s extraordinary art installations.

Even sufferers of vertigo will be able to enjoy Erlich’s playful house-scaling installations

The Argentine artist is currently showing at the CAFA Art Museum with a career-spanning exhibition that includes some of his most iconic installations that have helped garner him fame across the world.

Titled The Confines of the Great Void, the exhibition encapsulates the best of Erlich’s output and methods, creating illusory worlds where everyday objects are given another meaning.

Two of the embodiments of this style can be found in “Architecture” (pictured above), where viewers are allowed to “walk” on the building and see their reflection in the mirror and Changing Room where the viewer enters a labyrinth and interacts with both the space and other visitors.

One of Erlich’s Beijing site-specific pieces is titled Pulled From the Root, a repeating artwork that Erlich tailors to the location he is exhibiting in. It’s only fitting then that the floating house, suspended by a crane outside of the gallery, depicted here takes the appearance of a hutong dwelling, similar to the hundreds you’ll find in Beijing’s winding central alleyways.

We like to think that Erlich’s levitating hutong house highlights the importance of protecting cultural heritage

The installation is, of course, open to infinite interpretation, but we like to think that this is Erlich’s way to highlight the importance of protecting buildings with historical and cultural importance, especially given the rapid demolition and remodeling that Beijing’s treasured hutongs have witnessed over the past decade.

The masterful reproduction of the peeling walls and gray tiles also work to remind us that Erlich’s started out as an architect, the skills from which he also utilizes to play with viewers’ perception via well-placed mirrors, angle-play, and sense of depth.

Interaction is not only encouraged but necessary

There is always a trick to be found somewhere in an Erlich artwork, making the interaction between the viewer and each installation not only encouraged but necessary – the audience is not an outsider but rather a part of the installation itself.

The interaction doesn’t only make Erlich’s exhibitions fun but also leave a lingering impact thanks to the visually confounding images that we’d been presented: reminding us just how easily our perception can be hacked, and how seemingly simple changes can draw a line between reality and imagination.

Leandro Erlich’s Confines of the Great Void is showing Tue-Sun, 9.30am-9pm at CAFA Art Museum until Aug 25. Tickets are RMB 108.

READ: 5 Beijing Wanghongdians to Help You Live Out Your Most Narcissistic Selfie Fantasies

Photos: Art Express, CAFA Art Museum, Duan Duan

Woodcutting is nothing new as an art form in China; it goes back as early as the 9th century when it was originally used to reproduce Buddhist art motifs. However, a new breed of woodcutting artists emerged during the politically-charged 1930s, fueled by a strong nationalistic sentiment that arose from the Second Sino-Japanese War. Within such a context, Li Hua’s body of work sticks out as one of the strongest within what is considered the modern woodcutting art movement, alongside his predecessor and mentor Lu Xun.

Li Hua’s biography on display

Li is regarded as a woodcutting master, which makes him a fine subject to mark the Central Academy of Central Art‘s “Hundred Years of Glory,” a series of exhibitions and events to commemorate the longstanding institution’s 100th anniversary. The collection, named “Prometheus in Printmaking,” also marks what would be Li’s 110th birthday and aims to further highlight the artist’s work beyond his most popular and well-known period and reviews the artist’s trajectory through works, historical documentation, and personal documents.

The woodcuts, which are impressive pieces in themselves, are displayed alongside their prints

The artist’s legacy is divided into his achievements as a consecrated woodcut artist, as well as an academic and an educator devoted to sharing his knowledge and documenting techniques. Coming as no surprise from an institution that can afford such displays, viewers can expect a sizeable array of works arranged in a way that we must admit can be rather overwhelming (especially his academic work) even for disciplined observers. Saying that, the visual appeal of the exhibition is undeniable.

Li Hua’s “China, Roar!”

Works on display include perhaps Li’s his most famous works “China, Roar!” (1935), a woodcut that for many embodies the spirit of the epoch. In it, Li renders a gigantic human form tied to a post blindfolded, contorted, and struggling to release himself in absolute resistance to his oppressors. The work utilizes bold and crude lines that extend an emotional rawness and effectively draws empathy from the observer. As well as capturing the social zeitgeist – China’s struggle against the unremitting Japanese aggression circa the time of the Manchurian Incident – the aesthetic references that are discernable in the work itself demonstrate how the artist’s skills drew inspiration from international methods and pushed the boundaries of the more traditional woodcutting techniques that were administered back in the day.

The exhibition not only calls attention to original pieces by Li but also systematically reviews the scholastic context in which his artistic production developed. That includes the academic achievements attained while structuring and consolidating the department of printmaking at CAFA, which he coordinated for close to 33 years.

Li’s work stands as an example of the turn of woodcutting in the early ’30s in China, not only in technique but also in themes: caustic nationalistic criticism and the Sino-Japanese War as well as the years after the Communist Party’s triumph over the Nationalist government in 1949, when a more optimistic perspective took hold in his work.

CAFA’s entrance

While there, make sure to also peruse the work of another Chinese master and woodcutting legend in the Mainland, Wang Qi, who would be celebrating his 100th birthday this year.

Li Hua’s retrospective is on view at CAFA until Feb 25, 2018 and costs RMB 15.

Photos: GJ Cabrera

The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) has mounted a career-retrospective of Irish-born painter Sean Scully, running until April 23. Featuring over 100 of Scully’s works, ‘Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully 1964-2014, London – New York,’ includes many examples of the abstract color blocking he is famous for, as well as a new large scale sculptural piece in steel entitled China Piled Up. To watch Scully discuss the exhibition, and to see some examples of his work, watch this video. Visit The Guardian to read an in-depth interview with the artist; he has some interesting things to say about Ai Weiwei!

Read on for a crafty art project (inspired by Scully’s striped panels) which you can try out with your kids.

After your kids have seen the exhibit, follow these instructions from the blog Learning Parade (adapted from the art discovery area dedicated to Scully’s work at the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland).

Resources needed are few:

• a rectangle of stiff cardboard (about 20cms by 8cms) for each child
• lots of brightly coloured wool
• scissors
• double-sided sticky tape
• a staple gun for displaying your work

Simply stick a strip of tape down the center of each card. Then get each child to wrap strands of their favourite wool around their card to create stripes. They can design a pattern or just go for a random look…

You can place completed cards side by side, and combine to make your own family’s abstract masterpiece.

Photos courtesy of CCTV and Learning Parade