Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei was both the driving force behind the revolutionary Stars Group of artists in the late 1970s and the idea man behind Herzog & de Meuron’s bird’s-nest design for the 2008 Olympic stadium. His bad-boy stance can seem like shtick. Take, for example, his iconic photo series ‘‘Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,’’ in which he does exactly that, or the groundbreaking if not defamatory exhibition he curated alongside the Shanghai Biennale in 2000. But he is anything but disingenuous. His blog, read by some 10,000 people a day, mixes astute political and social commentary with unflagging daily photographic journal entries. His architecture firm, Fake Design, has 50 projects under way. And his artistic career is only just taking off. An almost $4 million project, set to highlight the opening of Documenta XII in June, will encamp 1,001 Chinese citizens in the center of Kassel, Germany. Their clothing and furnishings, like so much in the Chinese art world, will be of Ai’s design. (photo Song Chao) (courtesy www.nytimes.com)