BaBits: The Hyper Eve Babitz (I).

Hypertext of the 2000 interview by Paul Karlstrom, made for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Oral History Project. Maybe more texts later. The interview will be serialized as the text is (lightly) hypertextualized and media enriched, and collected HERE, where linking will probably continue after the initial posts. Eve Babitz is an artist, writer and formerly, a self-described art groupie. She achieved international fame when in 1963, at the age of 20, she got her photo taken playing chess in the nude with Marcel Duchamp at the Pasadena Art Museum, a photo that has become one of the iconic images of the artist. But such an introduction damns her with faint praise, for as Babitz’s numerous, smart, exuberant and hilarious books amply demonstrate, the L.A. of the 60s, 70s and 80s was pretty much her pearl-filled oyster. Along with Nathaniel West and Joan Didion, she is in my opinion one of the best writers on the city.

Part I.

Collected text.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is great, I just met you the day before yesterday, and here I am interviewing you.

EVE BABITZ: That’s right.

We’re really fast workers, aren’t we?

That’s right.

And you were being—just to put this into a bit of context—you were being interviewed for a video for a documentary over at Castle Green—

Yes.

—Green Hotel in Pasadena

About the Duchamp photograph.

Mm-hmm. And the—

You know, I’d never thought of myself as a model in that thing, but I guess I was volunteering for that job.

Why don’t you—

I thought of myself as, I was like an art groupie/art model and I wanted to—I never modeled for anything like that and never again did, and really most artists, you know, when they have models they really are drawing them basically, like in sculptures, not taking photographs, so I don’t know who—and it wasn’t Duchamp’s idea so I figured I was the artist and the model in that one.

Well, Julian Wasser was the photographer.

Right.

And I gather that this was something, aside from the official events around the—it wasn’t at the opening.

No.

Some people think it was at the opening.

That’s good.

And then that’s not right. It really was kind of—what should we say—it was kind of a guerilla act it seems to me.

That’s right, it’s a guerilla act. It happened in the morning, 7:00 in the morning.

Why don’t you tell me just, you know, what led up to it, how it came about?

Well, Julian came and there was the—they had the big party at the Green Hotel, even though Julian doesn’t remember it; he has photographs that he took there at that time. And so I didn’t get invited to it because Walter Hopps [curator of Duchamp retrospective at Pasadena Art Museum, 1963] was mad at me.

Why was that?

Because his wife was in town, basically.

Is that Shirley? [Art historian later married to dealer Irving Blum.]

Yes. I mean she came back, she suddenly did come back in a flash the minute that Duchamp thing happened and I was like not allowed in. So, but then I found out Jim Elliott wasn’t invited either, so maybe nobody under 20, maybe 21, under 21 you weren’t allowed in. So, so, he didn’t invite me, so, and he wouldn’t call me back, and he wouldn’t call my mother back. And so I decided that if I could ever, like, you know, create any vengeance or havoc in his life I would, even though I was pretty powerless because I was only 20 and there was no way I could get to him. But, this Julian came up to me at the opening, the public opening, which I went to with my parents and—

That was at the museum?

Yeah. At the Pasadena Art Museum, and he said he had this great idea that I should play chess naked with Marcel Duchamp and it seem to be such a great idea that it was just like the best idea I’d ever heard in my life. It was like a great idea. I mean, it was, not only was it vengeance, it was art, and it was like a great idea. And even if it didn’t get any vengeance, it would still turn out okay with me because, you know, it would be sort of immortalized. I would be this, you know, here’s this Nude Descending the Staircase guy and now he’s going to be The Nude in the Pasadena Art Museum. But, of course, I said, you know, I didn’t think that the Pasadena Art Museum old ladies would go along with this. So—

Was that part of what attracted you to the idea?

Yes. Yeah, because it was like the Little Old Ladies from Pasadena, you know that Beach Boys’ song.

Right.

So, I thought well, you know, this will be, you know, and it is kind of like, you know, it’ll just kill them to find out that this happened there. So, but, I thought that he should tell Walter so Walter would know what we were doing, that we were going to do this. Because, it didn’t seem like—I mean, it was okay to do it, but they ought to know basically. But, I know that Julian did not tell anybody because he probably forgot it the minute he agreed to do it. But he did call me the next day and say “Now, you’re not going to chicken out are you?” Because we were supposed to do this two or three days later when they came back from Las Vegas, maybe the next day. They went to Las Vegas; they came back, Duchamp shows up at like, I don’t know, it was a Thursday morning or something. It was like seven o’clock. Julian comes to get me at, like, seven in the morning. We drive out to Pasadena to create this, you know, rape. And Gretchen meets us there. She doesn’t know what’s going on. No one has told her.

This is Gretchen Glicksman?

Right. They just—Julian just, likes to, you know, play it by ear, basically. So, you know.

Did he just tell them that he wanted to come in to do some photographs?

Of Duchamp. Yeah.

And Duchamp didn’t know what he had in mind either?

And he brought, and he said “Put that chess table there”. You know, we’re going to do the chess table. So, Duchamp, he had no idea. I mean that maybe he would of chosen someone else basically. He’d never met me before.

Oh, I don’t know, you look pretty good.

He’d never met me before. I’d never met him before.

Did you know who he was though?

No, I didn’t know who–I mean, I had an idea when I went to the art opening that he was probably great. He was one of those great people like—

But you hadn’t heard of him before?

Excerpt from the documentary The Cool School, about the Ferus Gallery in L.A., of which Kienholtz was a founder.

No. I mean I’d never heard of anybody except Ed Kienholz. That was as far as my—I knew who Ed Kienholz was and I thought he was great. So, I didn’t even know who Joseph Cornell was at that time. So, and I knew that everybody was like in love with him because they had this huge party and they had two ballrooms and two bands. That I didn’t get invited to.

And that really pissed you off.

Yes. So I knew, I figured I—there’s got to be someway to get to this deal, some way to like, you know—

To be part of it.

Right, to be part of it.

PART II (of 9)

Collected text.