Naked Chess: Once Upon a Chess Game

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This promise didn’t stop me from going hog-wild at Barney’s, immersing myself in the scene, falling in love as any fool might with Ed Ruscha (the cutest) and Kenneth Price (maybe cuter) and Jim Eller (the “rat man,” who did terrible, dark things to rubber rats with red blood on them, but then, I was so young, I went for cuteness, not content).

Marcel Duchamp being viewed through glass with his major work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. Photograph: Mark Kauffman/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image Larry Bell: A dollar? I once got a whole suit for 10 cents! I could also be extravagant, though. Whatever money I had, I spent. Walter started calling me “Luxury” because of that and because of the thrift-store clothes that Billy Al and I used to buy and wear all the time. Walter also related it to the cigars I smoked. Walter was a chain smoker of cigarettes. I always had a cigar in my mouth, although they were not always lit. Finally I gave them up after 60 years, five a day. Stopped in January. All my ideas about Pasadena—about L.A. itself—were undergoing a molecular transformation. We were going from Little League to a home run in the World Series. Even my father thought it was a great idea, driving home in the car, although my mother did say, “If you change your mind, darling, it won’t matter.” I’ve been to New York since to see him,” Walter went on, “and the first thing he said to me was, ‘And so we meet again.’”He was a very singular type of person,” recalls Ruscha, an artist whose career was just beginning at the time of the first retrospective. “He was very mysterious. And compared to other artists, like the abstract expressionists who were two-fisted tough guys, suddenly Duchamp comes along and he is a more suave continental answer to aesthetic questions. Anyway, he proved to be a real guiding light. All of his works, they kind of went counter to what we learned in school. The fact that all of these works finally got together in this very unlikely little museum in Pasadena was a surprise and also a real jewel.” Laurie Pepper: Oh, Evie. That skin. Those teeth. Those tits! She was a goddess. That’s how she could just walk onto that scene and be a part of it.

When the pictures were made, Babitz was a 20-year-old student at Los Angeles Community College. The daughter of a violinist and an artist, and the goddaughter of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, Babitz was already at ease in a sophisticated, aesthetic milieu. She integrated herself into L.A.’s slowly burgeoning art scene, partying with Billy Al Bengston, Ed Kienholz, Kenneth Price, and the men who’d become integral to the California Light and Space movement: Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and Peter Alexander. Years later, she also became romantically involved with both Ed Ruscha and his brother. Babitz fully embraced her role as an art groupie.I became interested in playing and tried to stop thinking about holding in my stomach, but every time I thought I was so brilliant, like taking his queen on the fourth move, I’d lose. Still no ChessBase Account? learn more > Thousands of hours of high class video training. Openings, Middlegame, Endgame Lessons. Of all the things that have ever gone on between men and women, this was the strangest, in my experience. But it got stranger. For one thing, there were Teamsters in the next room, moving paintings, and they couldn’t help but be amazed.

The nude photo of Duchamp and Babitz playing chess has become iconic, not just for Babitz’s nudity, but for the way it embodies the spirit of that moment. Perhaps the greatest significance of this scene lies in the origins of the two individuals and their contributions to art and culture. Babitz’s indifferent attitude and Duchamp’s indifference make the painting an emblem of the artistic and cultural rebellion of the 1960s. There is youth facing age. It also captures the sexual revolution of the time, which was changing social norms and challenging the status quo.

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George and I walked to Fred Segal’s, this fancy clothing store with a café inside. And sitting there, George told me Chico stories, the one I especially loved being about how, when Walter curated this huge California Art show in San Francisco, he wanted to go to the party thrown by the artists who’d been omitted—and George said he’d go with him as his bodyguard if Chico would give George money for his rent in exchange. Since Walter couldn’t possibly go into this room full of people he’d personally excluded without a bodyguard, he agreed. “He promised to give me the money before he left,” George explained, “but suddenly I looked up and he’d gone. Without paying me. The party lasted all night. The next morning, Chico shows up again….”

Mirandi Babitz: Evie wasn’t going to go with Julian so she arranged for me to go with him instead. I already knew Julian. He’d photographed me before. He had an assignment for Time to take pictures of girls in their boots on Rodeo Drive, and I was one one of the girls. Actually, come to think of it, so was Myrna Reisman.

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George and I walked to Fred Segal’s, this fancy clothing store with a café inside. And sitting there, George told me Chico stories, the one I especially loved being about how, when Walter curated this huge California Art show in San Francisco, he wanted to go to the party thrown by the artists who’d been omitted—and George said he’d go with him as his bodyguard if Chico would give George money for his rent in exchange. Since Walter couldn’t possibly go into this room full of people he’d personally excluded without a bodyguard, he agreed. “He promised to give me the money before he left,” George explained, “but suddenly I looked up and he’d gone. Without paying me. The party lasted all night. The next morning, Chico shows up again ” Eve Babitz was a well-known party-girl in the bohemian circles of California where she met and became acquainted with a lot of celebrities, among them Harrison Ford, Steve Martin and Jim Morrison. She met the musician in 1966, one year after Morrison had founded "The Doors" together with Ray Manzarek and others. When he met Babitz Morrison was only 22 years old. Eve Babitz later remembered: "With Jim it was as if you had Michelangelo's David in your bed but with blue eyes. Jim's skin was so white." Babitz later published several books about her youth in California. At the entrance to the show, there was an old photograph from a long-ago opening in Paris that showed Marcel and a woman as Adam and Eve. I noticed this as I went in, and it seemed sweet to me, they both were so young and French and skinny. Not drugs,” George said. “Art. He was holding art. Probably stuff he stole from me or some other guy’s studio. If you caught him, he’d always say he was saving things from being stepped on, but I always knew he was stealing!” While Anna here is not exactly my type, she gets huge bonus points for helping push Chess towards the “sport” it could be.