Robert Mapplethorpe And Patti Smith Together Again At Marie Selby Botanical Gardens In Sarasota, Florida

“Soulmates” seems all together too touchy-feely a word to describe the relationship between Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. As two of New York’s coolest, edgiest, sexiest, hungriest–literally and figuratively–survivors emerging from its gritty art scene in the 1970s, “soulmates” feels too “The Notebook” to apply to them.

But if not “soulmates,” then what?

Lovers, friends, colleagues, collaborators, coconspirators, roommates, inspiration–all of those apply, yet individually, barely scratch the surface of describing their deep connection.

Mapplethorpe and Smith met the day that Smith moved to New York City in the summer of 1967. He would go on to become one of the most significant photographers of the 20^th century, she, a legendary singer-songwriter and poet inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In between, the magic of their connection never waned. It withstood Smith leaving New York for Detroit in 1979 to live with former MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, whom she would marry. It has endured beyond Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989 at age 42, during the prime of his career, from complications of AIDS.

This relationship and the artistry it helped produce receives a most unusual presentation during the exhibition “Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Flowers, Poetry, and Light” at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, FL. Taking over the entire 15 acres of Selby’s downtown Sarasota campus, the exhibition brings together nature-inspired photography, music and poetry of the two artists, created during the counterculture movements of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, alongside archival images and horticultural installations and vignettes inspired by their work.

“When I first came to Selby Gardens in 2015, I made a list of artists who I thought should be featured in a botanical garden setting, but had never been before; Robert Mapplethorpe was on that list because of his iconic flower photographs,” President and CEO of Selby Gardens Jennifer O. Rominiecki told Forbes.com. “Then, I read Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids about her relationship with Mapplethorpe and realized she had to be part of this show. While flowers and nature may not be the first things people think of upon hearing these artists’ names, they are a fundamental inspiration for, and subject of, their work. Robert and Patti’s relationship with each other and the relationship of flowers to their work are unique stories of two of the most influential artists of our time.”

Just Kids was published in 2010 following a death bed promise from Smith to Mapplethorpe that she would write an account of their time together. It took 20 years to complete because the pain brought upon by remembering their years together and Mapplethorpe’s tragic death was often too much for her to bear.

“It made me miss him,” Smith told “Interview Magazine.” “Sometimes I’d remember the atmosphere of our youth with such clarity that it hurt. So, I’d have to let go of (writing) for months and months.”

Through their relationship, Smith would become one of Mapplethorpe’s most frequent sitters. He photographed her for many of her album covers, including 1975’s Horses, which went on to achieve iconic status.

What drew the photographer to flowers?

“Mapplethorpe explained, ‘I started with flowers because it was a way of learning photography without putting people through a lot of problems,’” Carol Ockman, Selby Gardens Curator-at-Large and Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art History Emerita at Williams College, told Forbes.com. “Through flowers, he explored the contradictions at the heart of his work: light and dark, symmetry and asymmetry, the sacred and the profane, and life and death.”

He approached photographing flowers the same way he did people.

“According to the artist, they were not different from his portraits or nudes,” Ockman said. “The flowers capture ‘the peak of bloom,’ as one scholar put it, but all of his work distills the essence of his subject.”

Marking the sixth edition of Selby Gardens’ annual Jean & Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series, which explores the work of major artists through the lens of their connection to nature, the exhibition presents a selection of Mapplethorpe’s iconic photographs of orchids, hyacinths and irises, and Smith’s poems on flowers and nature as well as her music, in dialogue with new horticultural installations inspired by the two artists’ work.

Selby Gardens’ Tropical Conservatory, world-renowned for its collection of orchids and bromeliads, is reimagined as a photography studio and gallery, complete with drop cloth, box lights and living plants framed and suspended as still lifes. The experience throughout the Conservatory is enhanced with the sounds of Smith’s Horses album, the cover of which features her portrait by Mapplethorpe, and serves as the first dramatic visual upon entering the Conservatory.

The Museum of Botany & the Arts presents Mapplethorpe’s exquisite flower photographs made at Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in Tampa together with Smith’s haunting writings and lyrics. Reproductions of historic photographs of the two artists, their friends, lovers and living spaces tell the story, accompanied by Smith’s own words.

Throughout the exhibition, horticultural installations inspired by the two artists’ creative practices evoke vignettes from their shared histories in color palettes that connect back to their work-with rich, deeply hued varieties for Smith and flora in grayscale for Mapplethorpe. Some installations position the viewer as the photographer, looking through the viewfinder, and others evoke a gallery with plants framed as living art or an urban landscape like the area around the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, where the two lived in early days of their relationship.

Archival images, music from two of Smith’s early albums, and her own narration of Just Kids animate the visitor experience. A poetry walk including excerpted verses from Smith’s work provides moments of reflection within the gardens and underscores the rich symbolism of flowers.

“Patti Smith has been very supportive of the overall exhibition concept,” Rominiecki said. “As the design began coming together, she recommended specific poems and lyrics of hers that she thought would be relevant to include. When she visited the completed exhibition, her response could not have been more gratifying.”

The exhibition exemplifies Selby Gardens’ "Living Museum" model, where the works of master artists are explored through the lens of their relationship with nature within a landscape of specially cultivated flora.

Most exhibition visitors will likely associate Mapplethorpe with the “startlingly frank sadomasochistic images that catapulted him to the forefront of the ‘culture wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s.”

Fitting then that this presentation should take place in Florida in 2022, along the front lines of the contemporary culture wars. As the exhibition was debuting in February, Florida’s legislature was advancing a broad range of right-wing bills aimed at banning the use of the word “gay” in schools, restricting women’s reproductive rights and maintaining white supremacist underpinnings in public education. Florida’s new surgeon general also seems more motivated by conservative orthodoxy than science.

As with any great artist engulfed in controversy or fame for one specific aspect of his or her practice, much is lost when only considering the person through that lens.

“The initial controversy surrounding his work has, at times, overshadowed the diversity of his practice,” Rominiecki said. “Yet, regardless of subject matter—still life, portrait, or nude—his work is united by a rigorous formalism and a keen attention to light and shadow. These are the creative principles that most informed his practice and most reflect his enduring legacy.”

“Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Flowers, Poetry, and Light” will remain on view at Selby Gardens through June 26, 2022.