Portrait of a Rock Star As an Artist Patti Smith Turns Out to Be One of the High Points of This Year's Glasgow International Art Festival, Writes Moira Jeffrey
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Summary
GLASGOW International, the city's contemporary art festival which opened on Wednesday, likes to celebrate the twin poles of the local and the global, thus capitalising on Glasgow's longstanding do-it- yourself culture and its allied international reputation. If there is a patron saint of such activity, then self-taught artist Patti Smith might just be her. She is a world-famous rock star who doesn't so much hold a tune on her guitar as bruise it; an artist who struggled through years of bohemian poverty with the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; a poet and performer whose name forever will be associated with the crucible of punk at New York club CBGB; but who is thrilled to hold an exhibition at Glasgow's Mitchell Library because she is a collector and connoisseur of old books.
On her arrival in the city, 59-yearold Smith, whose iconic contribution to rock is only matched by her idiosyncratic but utterly heartfelt devotion to spiritual matters, might have been mistaken for a nun in her dark clothes and gold crucifix. That is, if you hadn't recalled that her most famous lyric, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine", contains both worship and confrontation.See the full content of this document
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Portrait of a Rock Star As an Artist Patti Smith Turns Out to Be One of the High Points of This Year's Glasgow International Art Festival, Writes Moira Jeffrey
At a press conference for her exhibition of drawings, paintings, prints and silver gelatin photographs, she appeared dressed like Keith Richards, only to reveal that not only does she carry a large- print bible whenever she travels, but in case it might need ...
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