Johnny Thunders & David Johansen

BOB GRUEN (B. 1945)

Johnny Thunders & David Johansen, Los Angeles, CA, 1973

signed and titled (lower margin)

silver gelatin print

image: 7 x 9 1/2 inches (17.8 x 24.1 cm)

sheet: 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)

Executed in 1973. Printed 1980s. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed and dated by the artist.

Johnny Thunders and David Johansen of the New York Dolls, photographed by Bob Gruen on the West Coast in 1973 — the year the band released their self-titled debut on Mercury Records and ran their first major US tour. Gruen had been photographing the Dolls since the band's New York residency at the Mercer Arts Center the year before, and would remain one of the most consistent photographic chroniclers of the band throughout its brief but influential career. The Dolls' visual identity — cross-dressed glam-trash, hair, attitude, transatlantic swagger — is the line that runs directly from this 1973 moment into the Sex Pistols' presentation three years later, after Malcolm McLaren's failed Dolls management period sent him back to London with a manifesto in his pocket.

PROVENANCE:

From the studio of Bob Gruen