A reverence for religion and prayer can seem jarring from a woman who famously declared that “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” but an earnest devotion lies at the heart of Patti Smith’s quest for vocation and salvation through art.
Patti and Robert are collectors: pieces of found art infuse much of their work. Both attach meaning, identity, and an element of the sacred to many of these objects; a discarded lamb from an FAO Schwartz Christmas display, a thrift store Jesuit cloak, crumbling portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
Smith’s childhood attraction to “talismanic charms” developed concurrently with her love of prayer. Many of her early treasures had direct religious connections: holy cards, scapulars, and damaged statues of saints. She even affirms her artistic “vocation” to a statue of Joan of Arc at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Robert’s relationship with religion has a more foreboding undercurrent – his strict Catholic upbringing. Yet his relationship to the church centers on the recurrent “funny feeling in his stomach, the thrill of doing something forbidden.”
So it doesn’t seem a stretch to compare the altar boy’s thrill of tasting sacrificial wine (violation of church taboo) and affinity for mystical elements of church aesthetics, to the fascination with shocking visuals in Robert’s later work.
As Patti watches Robert working by the light of votive candles in a castoff monk robe, she worries he will cross the barrier she perceives between prayer and magic. To Patti, art is a two-way conversation with God: “…the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution.”
Devotion is a strong presence in Just Kids: to art, to religion, and Patti and Robert to each other. The letter Robert writes before he leaves for San Francisco is a devotional to Patti and to his acceptance of the fluidity between art and religion: “I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together.” Patti, upon receipt of the letter, “accepted those words as a communion wafer.”
Do these religious allusions add any new insight or understanding to your own view of Patti and Robert’s work?
I am relatively new to Patti Smith. When I learned of her visit to campus earlier this year, I began to learn more about her music and started reading Just Kids. Though my knowledge of Smith’s life and work is very narrow, I never would have expected how much she talked about faith and her religious background. In my mind, the image of a young Patti saying her prayers didn’t translate to the great rock and roll star I knew she would later become. As I read through “Monday’s Children,” I realized how wrong that assumption was. Anyone who went through what Patti went through in her youth would have needed to have faith in someone or something to get to where she is today.
I think that most people, as children, are introduced to a certain kind of faith–that of our parents, our grandparents, our community–and sometimes we continue to keep that faith, sometimes we don’t. That was certainly my experience, growing up in a Catholic and Greek Orthodox family. I went to Catholic mass every Sunday, recited prayers from old books that my mother had in Catholic school, collected beautiful rosary beads that my Aunt Helen gave to me, and attended midnight mass at the elaborate Greek church on Easter. I was fascinated by all of the beautiful traditions, rituals, and idols of the Greek church. Similar images of prayer and religion are some of the first things we learn about Patti’s and Robert’s backgrounds, and these experiences influence their later lives.
Though I sometimes questioned my religion, I was always amazed by how my mother could put so much faith in God, even when it all seemed hopeless and the odds were stacked against her. She knew she would make it through a tough situation because of her faith. The way in which Patti and Robert believe in each other is no different. Patti was able to translate the religious experiences of her childhood and the faith she drew from it into what she needed it for as an adult, including the faith in herself as an artist and the faith that she and Robert would be able to take care of each other and make it together. The scene in cab at the end of the “Just Kids” section was particularly striking to me, and really defines their devotion to one another. Even in this incredibly hopeless moment, with Robert so ill and weak, Patti is sure that he will recover, and Robert is sure that they will be okay because of his faith in his relationship with Patti.
I am not yet finished with the book, but I’m looking forward to seeing how religion plays a role in Patti’s life as a musician and up to the present.
Patti Smith’s faith is prominent in Just Kids–her faith that she has been chosen for something, being an artist or artists’ muse. But while she thanks God for what she has, early in life, she deviated from following Christianity in a traditional manner. She wants to write her own prayers and speak to God intimately instead of repeating words written by someone else. Over time, her interest in religion becomes consumed by her obsession with symbols.
Patti experiences a connection with religious symbols, and throughout her life, she finds signs everywhere. She has a few instances of luck and takes them to be meaningful signals that she’s right and she will be “chosen” to be an artist. Robert is someone she meets by chance whom she feels she was meant to meet.
Robert’s Catholic upbringing is far stricter than Patti’s, and though he shares her interest in religious symbology. He becomes fascinated with Satanic imagery, and Patti seems unnerved and overwhelmed by it, and this seems like a foreboding sign, reflecting his dark and conflicted state of mind. She mentions how he covers their entire apartment in his art, making it his space instead of their space. His interest in this kind of imagery coincides with their living situation falling apart and them eventually coming to a point where they are living together but no longer even speaking.
Patti’s devotion to the artistic leads her to support Robert financially, working while he only makes art, even though they hardly have any money. She’s willing to make that sacrifice for his art. I am looking forward to reading the next section about the Chelsea hotel and seeing Patti’s faith take shape as faith in herself, and the development of her own art.