March 28th until June 22, 2008
American artist Patti Smith is probably best known for her poetry set to sometimes hard driving, sometimes melodical, punk music and spoken word pieces. Her poetry was, and is, seriously influenced by French poet Rimbaud, as well as other members of French culture like Nicole Stéphane, Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud and René Daumal. Those influences were evident early on in her career, from her first album Horses, that was released in 1975.
Smith became known in the punk world through her performances in New York at venues like CBGB’s and from her friendship and collaboration with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. But Smith is more than one of the first punk-rockers. She has survived a genre that a lot of people of her caliber don’t. She is a writer, a poet, a painter, a photographer, a mother, and a collector of memories.
This spring Fondation Cartier is presenting her work as a visual artist and pretty much giving her free reign to develop the program and exhibition:
Patti Smith began to take photographs in 1967 for use in collages. In 1995, she returned to photography using a vintage Polaroid Land 250: “The immediacy of the process was a relief from the long involved process of drawing, recording, or writing a poem.” Many of Smith’s photographs embody significant personal meaning: Robert Mapplethorpe’s slippers, Virginia Woolf’s bed, Hermann Hesse’s typewriter and Arthur Rimbaud’s utensils. Others serve as a visual record of her well-traveled life. The exhibition also features a selection of the artist’s drawings, several of which are borrowed from prestigious institutions such as the MoMA and the Centre Pompidou or from private collections.
The powerful yet subtle drawings have been executed with a calligraphic sense of line entwined with poetry and text. They represent her solitary side. Her collaborative side is represented in films directed by Robert Frank, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jem Cohen and the audio performance of The Coral Sea with Kevin Shields. She will shoot a short film, specially commissioned for the exhibition. The exhibit also includes cherished belongings taken from her personal archives. Among them original manuscripts, a photograph taken by Constantin Brancusi and a stone from the river in which Virginia Woolf committed suicide.
The exhibition will also include performances and informal poetry readings.
You can read more about the exhibition at Fondation Cartier and on Patti Smith’s web site.
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Tags: events, exhibitions, paris, patti smith, rimbaud
