Why did Marcel Duchamp play chess with a naked Eve Babitz?
A striking black-and-white photograph depicts an older man wearing a suit and a naked woman sitting opposite, ardently engaged in a game of chess. The woman’s nakedness seems to go unnoticed as the pair study their knights and pawns, and a sleek dark bob obscures her face. Paintings and bizarre sculptures surround the subjects, whose set-up becomes another piece of art amongst the gallery walls.
But who are the subjects of the iconic photograph? The naked woman is 20-year-old Eve Babitz, who became a writer and visual artist, depicting Los Angeles’ rich artistic culture through semi-fictional memoirs, particularly during the 1970s. Despite her incredible skill for writing, the press often focused on Babitz’s romantic encounters, although the writer used her status as an “art groupie” to her advantage. According to biographer Lili Anolik, “passing herself off as a groupie allowed Eve to infiltrate, edge into territory from which she’d otherwise have been barred.”
Babitz was no stranger to notoriety; instead, she took it in her stride and channelled her experiences into her novels. However, this 1963 photograph was her first brush with fame, born out of revenge. The goddaughter of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, Babitz found it easy to integrate herself into Los Angeles’ art scene, partying with the men that became part of California’s Light and Space Movement. During her time as a college student, she met Walter Hopps, who founded Ferus in 1957, Los Angeles’ first significant gallery, before becoming the Pasadena Art Museum curator.
Despite his marriage to Shirley Nielsen, Hopps began an affair with the young Babitz. At the same time, the art curator was working on a retrospective of French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp. The painter and sculptor rose to prominence in the 1910s after exhibiting a urinal in a gallery as an art piece and painting the dynamic ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’. By the 1960s, Duchamp was known as a chess player after “abandoning” art in 1923 (although he secretly made the fascinating Étant Donnés in the following decades).
When Hopps sent out invitations for Duchamp’s exhibition, Babitz was fuming when she did not receive one. Figuring this was because Hopps’ wife was in town, Babitz sought revenge, enlisting photographer Julian Wasser’s help. He suggested that they take a photograph of her playing chess in the nude alongside Duchamp himself. She thought the idea sounded perfect. Babitz recalled: “I mean, not only was it vengeance, it was art.” As the gallery staff “march[ed] back and forth with big pieces of art” ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Duchamp and Babitz took their seats and discussed Stravinsky before the artist beat the young writer at the game.
Babitz’s plan worked magnificently; Hopps walked into the gallery and was so shocked that his gum fell out his mouth. Apparently, from that moment, he began returning her calls. The writer shared: “Walter thought he was running the show, and I finally got to run something.”
