Most people know Patti Smith as the ultimate “rock chick.” But her artistic production is not limited to music. Mixing photographs, drawings, and films with personal objects, an intimate exhibition at the Fondation Cartier at the end of March reveals the multidisciplinary dimension of Smith’s 40-year-long career.

Among the exhibits are Smith’s early 1967 photographs used in collages and later ones, taken from 1995 with an old Land 250 Polaroid camera, which captured her travels and various objects linked to other artists: Robert Mapplethorpe’s slippers, Virginia Woolf’s bed, Hermann Hesse’s typewriter…

Also on display are various drawings lent by MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and private collectors, on which she superimposed prose and poetry. Smith’s voice will resonate from speakers throughout the exhibition.

The Fondation has commissioned a short-film that will be shown along with Smith’s contributions to various film projects and a sound performance. It is also opening its library to the artist’s favorite books, records, and movies and will let her be the master of ceremony of the Soirées Nomades that will take place every Thursday night during the exhibition. Expect poetry readings and New York-style rock music!

In recent years, the Fondation Cartier has specialized in shows that reveal other dimensions to an artist, uncovering, for instance, the explorations of filmmakers David Lynch and Agnès Varda into drawings and installations. This approach underscores the fact that being an artist is rarely an isolated function in someone’s life, but part and parcel of that life.

“Land 250”, March 28 - June 8. €4.50-6.50.
Fondation Cartier, 261, boulevard Raspail, Paris 14. Mº Raspail.
01 42 18 56 50. www.fondation.cartier.com