Richard Hell “Blank Generation”

ROBERTA BAYLEY (B. 1950)

Richard Hell Blank Generation

signed, titled, numbered and dated 'Richard Hell Blank Generation 1977 Roberta Bayley 2/25' (on the reverse)

cibachrome print

11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

Executed in 1977. This work is number 2 from an edition of 25.

Roberta Bayley's portrait of Richard Hell, shot in 1977 at Glenn O'Brien's West Broadway loft — O'Brien was away and had given Bayley the keys, in pursuit of better light and space than her own apartment offered. The concept was Hell's entirely. The phrase he wrote across his chest read "YOU MAKE ME ___" — an open prompt, meant in the spirit of the Blank Generation song title as Hell understood it: an invitation to be filled in with whatever the viewer chose, defiantly self-defining. The press, almost universally, misread the title as "Blank Generation" in the literal sense — empty, stupid, vacant — and the misreading attached itself to the entire downtown moment.

The black sharkskin jacket Hell wears in the frame was made for him by Barbariani, the tailor who also dressed the New York Dolls, and was styled by Hell after Wilson Pickett's mid-1960s record-cover looks. It is barely visible in the final image — Sire Records, when the photograph was selected for the cover of the Voidoids' debut LP Blank Generation, later that year, cut out the original background and added a flesh-coloured backdrop. Kate Simon shot the back cover with matching treatment.

PROVENANCE:

From the personal archive of Roberta Bayley