This week, I鈥檝e been blowing my mind with Vaclav Smil and Ai Weiwei (pictured above).
From viruses to innovation, there鈥檚 little that polymath Smil hasn鈥檛 written about in 40-plus books. If you don鈥檛 know him, start with , his latest, where he reveals what happened when US dinner plates got bigger, and how Jonathan Swift made the giants and Lilliputians in Gulliver鈥檚 Travels the 鈥渨rong鈥� size. Plus, did you know that incomes in China are as unequally distributed as those in the US?
Artist-activist Ai did. His exhibition, , at London鈥檚 Design Museum until 30 July, uses China as a lens through which to look at the whole world.
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In Still Life, Stone Age tools found in flea markets now resemble a layer of forgotten history; nearby, videos of older Beijing show it before ring roads destroyed it.
Most astonishing is a Lego recreation of one of Claude Monet鈥檚 Water Lilies paintings, with a dark area added by Ai. Its meaning turns out to be moving beyond words.
Liz Else
Senior culture editor
London
