Indomitable punk-priestess Patti Smith escaped for a few months to the City of Light where she has been writing a book, curating an art show and talking up Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a documentary 11 years in the making. Here, Ray Rogers chats with the fiery icon about inspiration, immortality and what Smith refers to as the “delight” of fashion.

Adjusting the bellows of her vintage Polaroid camera, Patti Smith squints into the exceptionally bright early evening light of a hot summer night in Paris. A wheelbarrow full of wet cement glistening in the sun has caught her eye. We’re outside the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, where Smith has been ensconced in a fourth floor office for the past three months, overseeing her “Land 250” art show, so named for the make of Polaroid she uses and the number of photos in the multi-media exhibit at the Foundation’s downstairs gallery. She spends a few moments tinkering with the frame, but can’t quite get the angle she wants, so it’s back up to the office. Time is running short. Tomorrow, she will leave the City of Light and embark on a summer tour with her band, so a few hours this afternoon are spent boxing up her belongings.

“Patti Smith is such a goddess. I could never talk to her,” Parker Posey confided at a small cocktail reception for the legendary rock ’n’ roll poet last week in the outdoor sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. At said moment, Smith came lunging in for Posey, lavishing praise on the indie queen for her hilarious roles in Christopher Guest movies. It couldn’t have been a better-scripted scene if Guest wrote it himself. Luckily, Posey overcame her goddess-shyness and lit right up in Smith’s presence. The occasion was a screening of Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a poignant biopic from fashion photographer Stephen Sebring that hit theaters this week, after eleven years of filming.

A devastating virus brought the whole moment to a tragic, unforgettable end. But the legacy that is Robert Mapplethorpe extends far beyond the censorship, headlines—and S&M. As a new generation views his subversive, formalistic Polaroid portraits in an ongoing exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Nick Haramis catches up with some of the late icon’s equally illustrious subjects, supporters, chroniclers and partners in crime in an oral history submitted to set the record (mostly) straight.

Taken at a glance, the anthurium looks fragile, as if its rawboned stem might collapse under the weight of the fleshy spike engulfed by heavy leaves which sits atop the entire thing like a crown. Robert Mapplethorpe’s camera, however, not only captures the delicacy of the flower, but also draws attention to its pulsing, yannic throb, which, along with its neoclassical beauty, elevates the near-wilting object into a work of art. It’s a still life, but there’s nothing still about it. And, despite initial appearances to the contrary, it isn’t all that far from his more recognizable photographs, the shocking ones, all of which strive for unparalleled aesthetic splendor.