Just Kids: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe

Patti Smith discusses her National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids this Saturday, 2pm at the National Portrait Gallery.

In 1967, the twenty-three-year-old Patti Smith left her aimless life in southern New Jersey to try her luck in New York City. Seeking what, exactly? A job? A job in the arts? Something tangible? Perhaps. But more a sense of transcendent liberation and self-expression fueled by her sense that, ultimately, she would make her own way in the world.

It turned out she quickly found a soul mate to help make this journey. Arriving at a friend’s apartment, she viewed a beautiful man with a faun-like head, asleep. She lost track of this youth but then found him again, and he introduced himself. 

“My name is Bob.”
“Bob,” I said, really looking at him for the first time. “Somehow you don’t seem like a Bob to me. Is it okay if I call you Robert?”

It was Robert Mapplethorpe, another artistic scuffler in the city, another visionary convinced of his own ultimate success.

Patti Smith tells the story of her relationship with Mapplethorpe against the backdrop of the 1970s and 1980s in her affecting and lovely memoir, Just Kids. It recently won the National Book Award for nonfiction. During the 1970s Smith established herself as a poet, artist, rocker, and all-around American troubadour in the tradition of Walt Whitman; her career is ongoing today. Mapplethorpe, in his wholehearted belief of Smith, was essential to her career and sense of self. She reciprocated that belief, and they remained close even after Mapplethorpe finished the long process of coming out as a gay man.

Smith writes in a brief afterword to Just Kids that she always intended “one day to write our story,” and this is the fulfillment of that promise. The book begins and ends with his final days, dying of AIDS in 1989. In the first scene, Smith listens to his labored breathing over the phone on the night he passed away. At the end, she tells about the last time they spoke and his falling asleep: “So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone had never been a stranger.” When word came of Mapplethorpe’s death, Smith played Puccini’s aria “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca: I have lived for love, I have lived for Art. Just Kids shows how great art comes from great love.

- David C. Ward, National Portrait Gallery

Comments

[JL W]

I went down to see Patti Smith today. The genius staff at the National Portrait Gallery neglected to mention in their press advance that you needed a ticket and only 300 people would get them. We were told we cold wait for Patti to sign books. Which we did. Then when the book signing time came around (now two hours of waiting) we were told to get in a "special line" since our book were not bought at the Gallery. So we were taken out of line and put in a special line that would get to have Patti Smith autograph a book AFTER all the others in line who bought books at the Gallery did - regardless of when they came to the line. Nice huh? This is the kind of offensive stuff that Gallery's are criticized for constantly. For me, it was such a low brow way of doing things that I left without suffering the insult of being put last in line. Thank goodness my tax dollars don't pay for this Gallery. (Hey, wait a minute...). Thank for nothing staff. You really blew it.

[Joe S.]

That was AWESOME. Patti Smith is even cooler than I thought, which is saying something. When the curator asked her to play, and she brought out a guitar, my wife literally squeaked. I mean, where else can you get a free Patti Smith performance, and she takes questions after?
We saw the ticket notice on their web site, call it luck or "genius" if you want but had no problem getting two. The book line was long but totally worth it (Christmas shopping!).
Patti (and the Portrait gallery) made our weekend. Thanks!

[Alis in Chains]

Before the talk, we went to see what's left of the Hide and Seek show, which took a lot longer than expected. Partly cause it's huge, partly cause it was crowded, and partly because PATTI SMITH WAS IN THERE, wandering around like she was just anybody.
The talk was really interesting-- the interview guy kept it about her and the book. She didnt seem to think much of the controversy, I thik she called it overblown. She said the show was 'bold and beautiful' and, even though I went in there expecting to be mad, I have to agree.