Book 3: Just Kids by Patti Smith

When Patti Smith was very young, her parents took her to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. She left the museum transformed, “moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.” Although she had no clear plan and few resources, she felt a calling and “dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.”

Years later, when Smith was 21, she headed for New York, hoping to meet up with friends studying there. Almost immediately she met Robert Mapplethorpe, a fellow artist looking for work and inspiration. Their chance meeting turned into a lifelong relationship in which they would be friends, lovers and friends again. In meeting Mapplethorpe, Smith’s wish was granted; she would be both “muse and maker,” Frida Kahlo to Mapplethorpe’s Diego Rivera.

Although Patti Smith’s own story is illustrious – she is an artist, poet, writer, activist, the Godmother of punk – it is her unique relationship with Mapplethorpe that is the subject of her 2010 memoir, Just Kids. The book details their courtship, bohemian lifestyle and burgeoning careers at a time when art, music, politics, activism and AIDS converged in New York City.

Part journal, part scrapbook, part poem, Just Kids is sometimes romantic and tender, sometimes crude, and sometimes tedious. It is punctuated with colorful meetings with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and William Burroughs, and references to Jim Morrison, Andy Warhol and the “eccentric and damned” Chelsea Hotel. The book is nearly over before Smith mentions her advancing music career, but as she says at the end, she did not intend to document her own success. Instead she reveals a very human, nearly tortured side to Mapplethorpe and his lifelong drive to become an artist, not just someone who creates art.

The book is a moving tribute to Mapplethorpe, a “sweet and mischievous, shy and protective” man who was often maligned as an artist. Just Kids is Smith’s way to eulogize him, say goodbye, and continue a collaboration that lasted a lifetime.