Richard Tuttle (which is British for “turtle”) is the master of doing a lot with a little.

He hasn’t always been a praised genius, however. The art critic for the New York Times, Hilton Kramer, in response to Tuttle’s first solo show in 1975 at the Whitney Museum wrote, “Less has never been less.” Critics got a little snobby and said that “the pieces didn’t even look as if they would make it to the end of the show.” In their defense, his sculptures (which he always refers to as drawings regardless of medium) were teeny tiny wires and pencil-drawn lines and sheets of cloth. I guess people were just used to the overcompensation of artists like Richard Serra and Jeff Koons with their ginormous scale.

This poor review ultimately caused the curator of the show, Marcia Tucker to lose her job. Luckily she got her “Pretty Woman” moment, the one where Vivian gets to go back to the store that originally denied her and tell them what a huge mistake they made by refusing to help her. This moment was when she started the New Museum in New York, which is housing some of the most badass exhibitions and retrospectives to date. Even better than that was when the Whitney decided to do a huge retrospective on Tuttle. Take that, snobs!

Through all this, Tuttle remained unfazed though. His response was, “My work has always tended to make people say stupid things, unfortunately.” He just kept bopping around New Mexico, making art and being a genius. He married Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, poet and winner of two American Book Awards who does in words what he does in art. They are relationship goals incarnate and we couldn’t be more jealous. Tuttle’s view on life? He said, “I didn’t make this world, but I have to live in it, so I’m doing the best I can.”

But really this is Tuttle’s world and we are all just visiting.