Wednesday’s Wise Woman … Patti Smith

For a  future post; this morning I was searching for an image of a violet.  Having none in the garden to photograph myself I had to resort to ‘foul means.’  While foraging; I came across a photography book called Flowers by Robert Maplethorpe; photographs, the like of which I had never seen before.  ‘Astounding in their intensity … erotic drama … absolute clarity of composition’.  Sadly there was no image I could filch.

However, what I did find interesting was that the forward was written by Patti Smith.  I have since learned that they were close friends and Robert was a champion of her work as a painter and calligrapher.  Robert asked Patti to write an introduction to his Flowers  also for her to write his story.  He was dying; she made the promise  but it became difficult to keep.   Just kids for which she won National Book Award was the result of that last meeting in March 1989.

I was blissfully unaware of her work as  a painter.  I have always been a fan of her punk music. Patti was born 1946; Patricia Lee Smith; an American singer, songwriter, poet and visual artist.  She was best known for her involvement with the New York City punk rock movement and her first album Horses; in particular the song Because the night which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen.  Patti; called the Godmother of Punk performed with Blondie,  the Patti Smith Band and the Patti Smith Group. She dropped in and out of popularity for about 30 years.

Encouraged by this find I went to discover another little gem; Strange messenger ; the work of Patti Smith.  It is a small  catalogue that accompanies Patti’s current exhibition of her visual art works, manuscripts and photographs collected over 30 years. This book, published by the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, includes some of her rarely seen pieces from the late sixties and seventies, but mainly her her more recent work exploring the physical and spiritual effects of the 2011 destruction of the World Trade Centre.
For example; a silk screen print series showing the remains of the collapsed South Tower.  Patti writes ‘I think of Picasso and how he reacted to the bombing of Guernica.  How he translated his pain and horror into his monumental work’.
Alongside the delightful and poignant images there are insightful and engaging essays by David Greenberg and John W. Smith.
I was moved by the introduction in the Flowers that begins ‘It is by the grace of  [a] god that our fields and hothouses are filled with blooms that can be arranged and exchanged in the act of giving …’
To buy a copy of the Strange Messenger and read it fully.

Flowers by Robert Maplethorpe
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Strange Messenger : the work of Patti Smith with essays by David Greenberg and John W. Smith.