At the same time, he could have made a great deal more money to spend on his many causes had he not stood up to corporate power. Though he insisted his art was not political, it may be argued that the pieces he never undertook had political overtones. He refused major commissions from corporations that offended his liberal views on social justice or that endangered public health.27 All this earned him respect and admiration from fellow artists. The minimalist sculptor Carl Andre spoke for many when he called LeWitt “our Spinoza.”28
LeWitt asserted that objectivity and careful planning yield contemplative art. Hence, his work was often thought to be cold, impersonal, and even anti-art—a sequel, perhaps, to the emperor’s new clothes. Later, however, the public embraced it as deeply personal. Many visitors to his exhibits are stunned by what they see, and children, attracted by the vibrant colors of the huge wall drawings, gasp and stretch their arms wide in delight. As Schjeldahl wrote in 2000, “If his art is without apparent emotion, that just leaves an inviting vacuum. Love rushes in.”29
Contradiction is at the heart of the LeWitt phenomenon and the artist himself, and that became part of my impetus to connect his life and work. The difficulty in making that connection was expressed as early as 1993, when the British art critic Richard Dorment wrote in the Daily Telegraph, “There are few living artists that I admire more than the American Sol LeWitt, and few more difficult to write about.”30
■ My pursuit of the LeWitt story has its roots in the last twenty years of his life. He and I lived in the same small town, Chester, Connecticut. We both belonged to the local synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, whose new building he designed,31 and attended Wednesday morning minyan services. On Passover, our families came together to celebrate the holiday and to invite commentary on the bondage and oppression that still persists in the world. Sometimes we read from a Haggadah that I wrote with Marilyn Buel and Jil Nelson—a play in which each person present was given a role. LeWitt was often cast as God. He took the part, though he grumbled about it.
Most often, though, I saw him mornings in his studio. He was always an early riser, so by 9:00 A.M. he had already put in three hours of work and walked with his dog, Lilla, to the middle of town to buy the New York Times, and he could accommodate a visitor—even an unannounced one. Sometimes I watched as he attended to his tasks. Sometimes we sat and talked. He did not use these occasions to complain about the art world or difficulties with his installations. I didn’t use them to express my own professional frustrations at the time, trying to keep Northeast, the Hartford Courant’s Sunday magazine, alive as newspaper economics collapsed, or to discuss the challenges I later faced in the books I was writing. We talked instead about current events, music, and literature. We compared stories about our service in the US Army Quartermaster Corps (LeWitt during the Korean War and me during the Vietnam War). We shared our passions and regrets as two rare Connecticut fans of the Cleveland Indians.32
On a few occasions I couldn’t help asking about his work. In 2005, I saw a pencil sketch pinned to the wall behind his desk. It looked to me like a variation on a series of wall drawings he had recently created, but somehow it seemed a little more complicated, something like interwoven figure eights. “That’s for a ceiling,” he said, “in Reggio Emilia.” I waited for more explanation, but he said only, “Maybe you can see it when you go to Italy this fall.” The work would be installed on the ceiling of the reading room of the city’s eighteenth-century public library. What I didn’t know at the time was that I would view the completed piece before he did. A crew of mostly young Italian artists, following LeWitt’s meticulous instructions, finished Whirls and Twirls that summer.33 I saw it a few weeks later, but LeWitt didn’t learn how his plan worked out until late 2005, when he took his last trip to Italy.34 Several years later, one prominent Italian collector, Giuliano Gori, who had commissioned LeWitt to do site-specific work on his property in Pistoia, referred to Whirls and Twirls as “LeWitt’s Sistine Chapel.”35 However it was labeled, its power had a great effect on me.
As a writer, if I experienced what I called a religious experience—having nothing to do with theism but instead referring to the state of being deeply moved—I inevitably wanted to bring readers into that moment and share that epiphany with them. In the case of Whirls and Twirls, unapologetically bold and colorful and floating above the library patrons below, I thought, “I must write about this.”
But there was more that drove me to write this biography. As I see it, LeWitt transcends categories. Yes, he was a member of an elite group. But with his personal characteristics and the inspiration that resulted from them, he serves as an example for anyone who wants to create—not only painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers, but also teachers, researchers, and entrepreneurs in search of new ideas and techniques and eager to break barriers.
LeWitt once said, “You shouldn’t be a prisoner of your own ideas.”36 This is not a comment limited to art styles. It is instead a call to think freely and honestly every day. Indeed, it is LeWitt’s sense of authenticity in a world of moral complexities and unrepentant egotism that makes his example compelling. A comment he made to the Hartford curator Andrea Miller-Keller seemed to sum up both his ambition and his sense of humility. In response to questions she sent him in Italy in the early 1980s, he said, “I’d like to create something that I wouldn’t be ashamed to show Giotto.”37
His life story, then, should interest anyone who wants to succeed but is afraid of breaking rules. After all, shy and humble Sol LeWitt broke a rule that had held since the Renaissance—that the artist’s hand is the primary force in Western art.38
Many of LeWitt’s peers had, in his view, more natural talent and had grown up without the hardships he had faced. But to him the struggles of childhood and later made his growth as an artist possible. Without struggle, he said, greatness can’t be achieved: “Talent is a curse.”39
Even LeWitt would have agreed, if reluctantly, that his personal decisions and generosity advanced the careers of many colleagues—most significantly, the women he mentored at a time when most female artists were ignored. In part, because of his own questioning, he understood the weight of their pursuits. His support of others also created a financial substitute for the cult of personality, creating momentum through a large circle of artists who promoted each other’s work.
■ The deep friendship between Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse, as well as the relationship of their respective oeuvres, has lately has been a subject of major art exhibits and film documentaries. Both rejected long-held tenets of art, and Hesse did so within a system that shunned her. When she wrote from Germany that she was at the breaking point, Le-Witt replied. The first half of his long and passionate letter (reprinted in full in chapter 6), with its forty-five consecutive gerunds (many of which would have come as news to Noah Webster), is the part that is often quoted and has even been made into a punk rock video40 and become a performance piece for the actor Benedict Cumberbatch.41
The letter foreshadows the intense adventures in variation (or, as it was generally referred to, seriality) that LeWitt would later pursue, as if he were Johann Sebastian Bach (his favorite composer), not a maker of images. But it is the second half of what he wrote to Hesse, which is almost always missing in commentaries, that underscores the connection between the person making art and art itself. In it, LeWitt refers to his own doubts; like Hesse, he had considered himself an outsider.
LeWitt’s struggle is metaphorical, one that can be understood outside the world of art. For example, in his letter to Hesse he delivered advice in one brief sentence that should serve everyone who yearns for self-discovery and authenticity: “You belong in the most secret part of you.” For him there would be no rut, no “if I could only do what I want to do.” Yet, in this contradictory man, there was another side to him, one that could be cold or dismissive.
As his longtime business manager, Susanna Singer, told me, “Yes, he was an extraordinary man, but Sol was not a saint.”42 I came across lingering resentments in other interviews. As his conceptual colleague, Lawrence