The Gorgeous TIME Ai WeiWei China Cover

1. Someone’s come a long way from detention.

2. Apparently, political illustration is not completely dead.   (…I just wonder how it stacks up on Pinterest.)

3. And talking pattern recognition, do you think Ai WeiWei saw this one?

4. Such an elegant image, of China as a loom and also looming. (Also in the mix: a China-shaped mushroom cloud or a spider’s web. I’m sure you have more.) But doesn’t this artful expression represent, more than anything, how much the U.S. relationship with China is crying out for real craft and imagination, and that the perception of China (or nearly any other country), on the part of the American public, is woefully lacking in creativity?