More images have emerged from Balenciaga's spring/summer 2012 campaign, which star four newcomers: Laura Kampman, Kirstin Liljegren, Rosie Tapner, and Juliane Gruner. The Steven Meisel-shot ads feature grungey girls with messy hair, hanging in messy rooms, wearing designer clothes. According to Models.com, the fashion house was inspired by personal photos from Patti Smith's 2010 memoir Just Kids (which is a fantastic book, by the way) and used the images to recreate the rocker-trashed digs that the iconic artist shared with writer Sam Shepard.

While promoting his upcoming flick Blackthorne, actor/playwright Sam Shepard revealed he's been recording with his longtime friend Patti Smith. He told the Washington Post he's singing and “doin’ some old tunes” at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, featuring blues, gospel and banjo-heavy songs from “Ivory Joe Hunter, Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown, Washington Phillips, Charlie Poole — those guys.”

● 8 babies, 150 episodes, and one very publicly failed marriage later, TLC has at last canceled Kate Plus 8. "And remember, this is not ‘goodbye’. I prefer to say ‘See you around!,'" tweeted Kate. See you! [EW] ● Patti Smith is adapting her National Book Award-winning Just Kids for the big screen with the help of Tony Award-winning playwright John Logan. [RS] ● Case of Ace, make it two: Sparring no expense, Jay-Z spent the weekend in Miami, where he drank $250,000 worth of champagne and left a $50,000 tip in a very serious celebration of Watch The Throne. [Radar]

The National Book Awards - the Oscars of the literary world - took place last night, and like the Oscars, they were filled with tears, surprises, and other high drama. After the jump, find out who won, who lost, and my thoughts on a bunch of books I haven't read.

In my last post I wrote about the model’s paradox of feeling like an object while trying to maintain a strong sense of self. While "disposable commodity" is the overarching definition of "model," I neglected to add that when modeling is good, it’s really fucking good. Yesterday, I spent the majority of the day wallowing in existential ennui (a sort of what-the-fuck-should-I-do-with-my-life-why-haven’t-I-finished-writing-my-first-collection-of-poems-yet thing) and coming to terms with the fact that my days aren’t as imbued with meaning as they were when I was writing term papers on the modern metropolis or Leonard Cohen’s poetry. I may have remained in that state all day because I only had one casting, at 5:30, so I had a lot of time to scrutinize my recent pursuits. But then I went to the casting.

A group of legendary musicians salute an all-time great

My first vision of Patti Smith is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. She’s a few feet from me on a dark stage in a club, long lost in addled memory. I can see her now in my minds eye …slow motion… then faster than life, then a strobe light vision in a white T-shirt. Bottles are being thrown at the stage and she’s barking and bellowing at the combat-booted crowd. She leers and screams, threatening them into a frenzy of punk madness. I became conscious in that world of geek bands like the Dead Boys, The Heartbreakers and The Ramones, where being sedated or lost or misplaced was the anthem. Patti Smith was saying something different to me that night.

My favorite Patti Smith quotation is a recent one—from an excellent New York profile, by Vanessa Grigoriadis, pegged to the release of Smith’s memoir of her and Robert Mapplethorpe’s rollicking early days in NYC, Just Kids— “Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should…the people are making their own art, taking their own photographs, making their own songs, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. But a pure artist is a different animal.” In the age of blogs and stunt memoirs, McGinley imitators and Terry Richardson aspirers, these are words to be taken to heart. One has to wonder if Ms. Smith could point to anyone in the fashion world as a pure artist. It’s doubtful, though something tells me Alexander McQueen would have come as close as anyone. During her set at LnA’s afterparty at Milk Studios last night, Smith dedicated her final song to Mr. McQueen, a genuinely kindly tip of the hat from punk’s queen to the departed prince of Savile Row.

January 6th marked the opening of Objects of Life, a collaborative multimedia installation between legendary artist, singer/songwriter Patti Smith, and renowned filmmaker/photographer Steven Sebring, at the Robert Miller Gallery. The gallery’s opening partying attracted the likes of Michael Stipe, Terry Richardson, Zac Posen, Calvin Klein, Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard. The exhibition focuses on the “experience, process of discovery and revelation in uncovering artifacts of existence,” using objects, photographs and video from Sebring’s acclaimed documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life, an immensely intimate portrait of Smith. The documentary, which was recently televised on the PBS series P.O.V, traces 11 years of Smith’s private life, experiences on the road, performances, creative ventures and passions. BlackBook spoke with Sebring about his career, his muse, the decade-long process of filming Dream of Life and this exciting new exhibit.

Sometimes the best things in life really are free. And sometimes they are happening right under your nose. Our pal at KCRW, Rachel Reynolds, took us out one night to something we could walk to (a major plus in this car city) that was right in our 'hood. The 25th Annual Twilight dance series has been going on all summer, every Thursday from 7-10pm.. So far, it's been an eclectic mix of music: everyone from the Squirrel Nut Zippers to Joan Baez to The Lowrider Band. This week is your last chance, and the act is a doozy: Patti Smith and her band.