Thought provoking

Art is always the result of constraint. To believe that it rises higher as it becomes freer is to believe that what keeps a kite from rising is its string. Kant’s dove, which thought it could fly better without the air to trouble its wings, did not realize that in order to fly, it had to have the air’s resistance to support its wings. Likewise art ... See more

He compares the longing for unbounded autonomy to a dove “cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels,” imagining that “it could do even better in airless space.”