Just Kids

“What I found so moving about this book is that it links the crucial elements of friendship and art to survival. The work of art stands as a souvenir of friendship, but also becomes in and of itself like a ‘friend’ that survives the people whose friendship it was preserving. So, if you think about that iconic portrait of Patti Smith by Mapplethorpe – long after Patti Smith herself has left, and long after we all have left, that portrait will still be attesting to the shared friendship between those two ‘kids’ in that moment, on that day, when it was taken. And in generations and even centuries to come, every time someone gazes upon Mapplethorpe’s portrait of Smith, the portrait will conjure those people, reinstantiating both the moment of friendship and the moment of making that portrait. Patti Smith’s book is wonderful in that it is also a portrait of a particular New York that is very much gone. “ Read more...

The best books on The Lives of Artists

Maria Loh, Art Historians, Critics & Curator

Is there any reason not to listen to Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, as an audiobook when it’s narrated by the artist herself?

Narrator: Patti Smith

Length: 9 hours and 50 minutes

Great Audiobooks Narrated by Their Authors