Less Stumbling, Numbling, Rambling, Gambling! More DOING!
What Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse's artistic exchange can teach us about gratitude.
Hello GUT fam,
Over the last week, we asked how our homes can spark our creativity, and we tried leaving our art supplies in places where they’d catch our eyes. We were blown away by how many of you already do this. So great to see what your materials inspired you to draw!
Long-time readers will know that practicing gratitude has been a big part of the GUT. Our path to gratitude this week starts with one of the best letters EVER from one artist to another.
Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse
Before becoming known for his contributions to minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt was part of a vibrant New York artists’ circle in the 1960s. Through that circle, he met fellow artist Eva Hesse. They became close friends and corresponded as she moved to Germany for her then-husband’s artist residency in 1964.
Germany was hard for Eva. Born there in 1936, she and her Jewish family had fled the Holocaust when she was a girl. Now, feeling creatively blocked, she reached out to Sol. He wrote back with this incredible letter:
Here’s a transcription of the first page:
Dear Eva,
It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO.
Wow, right?! It’s worth reading the whole thing on The Marginalian (thanks Maria!). And here is a video of Benedict Cumberbatch reading it aloud.
The only way to do it is to DO it.
The very next year, Eva had a creative breakthrough and started making the sculptural work she is most remembered for. Sol came to help her install a piece, Metronomic Irregularity II, when she was back in New York for a show.
People often talk about Sol’s influence on Eva’s work. But this piece of hers—which changed in each installation, depending on the person threading the wires—helped spark Sol’s ideas for his now-famous wall drawings. Rather than draw them himself, they were sets of directions to carry out a drawing. He had come to believe that the concept was the art—he compared himself to a composer whose work is performed by an orchestra.
In 1970, Sol was putting a show together when he received some devastating news: Eva, just 34 years old, had died of a brain tumor. In just a couple days, he created a new wall drawing dedicated to her. He broke away from the precise geometries of his prior work and called for “not straight” lines next to each other. The tribute was one final reminder, perhaps, to “just DO.”
So what the heck does this have to do with gratitude?
How does Sol’s “just DO” advice relate to gratitude?
To become a more grateful person (and let go of our scarcity mindset and grow a more abundant outlook on life), we have to PRACTICE gratitude. We have to DO it. And it’s not something we’re born knowing how to do.
Drawing and gratitude(ing!) are both verbs. Okay, one of them SHOULD be a verb. The only way to learn them is to do them. So let’s get on with it!
