Land 250

["Andrew F Wilson" <andrewfwilson>]

The Fondation Cartier is hosting a major solo exhibition of the visual
work of American artist and performer Patti Smith. Drawn from pieces
created between 1967 and 2007, it strives to provide an insight into
her lyrical, spiritual and poetic universe. Her expressive voice
serves to magnify the installations created specifically for the
exhibition: a synthesis of photographs, drawings and films.

While the name Patti Smith evokes an image of a founder of the New
York punk-rock scene, she has explored the visual arts and poetry
since the late 1960s. The exhibition at the Fondation Cartier embraces
the various facets of her creative process. 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 source of much of her inspiration has been key figures of French
culture, including Arthur Rimbaud, Nicole Stiphane, Jean Genet,
Antonin Artaud and Reni Daumal. Paris echoes throughout, from drawings
executed in the Montparnasse district, where she lived during her
first Parisian sojourn in 1969, to recent photographs taken in the
garden of the Fondation Cartier, situated nearby.

To reflect the multitude of fields explored by Patti Smith, the
exhibition is intended to be a comprehensive project that expands
beyond the exhibition space. The Fondation Cartier is giving free rein
to Patti Smith to oversee the programming for the Nomadic Nights as
well as performing herself, offering solo and band performances as
well as informal poetry readings. The Fondation Cartier's bookshop
will, for a time, become the artist's personal library. Her choice of
books, CDs, films and objects will enable visitors to further
penetrate the rich universe of this iconic artist.

The Fondation Cartier publishes a catalogue of two hundred fifty
photographic works, predominately unpublished polaroids, as well as a
set of three books, annotated with the artist's texts. One presents a
series of photographs devoted to sculpture, a second centres around
the figure of Arthur Rimbaud (poems, drawings and photographs), and
the third is a notebook designed by Patti Smith.

Patti Smith: Land 250. 28 March 2008 - 22 June 2008.  The exhibition
is open every day, except Monday, from 11 am to 8 pm, Tuesday evenings
until 10 pm.

Fondation Cartier
261, boulevard Raspail
F-75014 Paris
Tel +33 (0)1 42 18 56 50
Fax +33 (0)1 42 18 56 52
fondation.cartier.com

Kind regards


Andrew