The photo with Marcel Duchamp was shot in October 1963 in the Pasadena Art Museum. The director of the museum, Walter Hopps, 31, celebrated Marcel Duchamp's oeuvre with a retrospective. On 7. October the exhibition started with a party to which Hopps had invited a number of hip Californian artists. Among the guests were Marcel Duchamp and his friend and co-worker Man Ray, art dealer Irving Blum, Pop-Art-artist Edward Ruscha, the artists Larry Bell and Billy Al Bengston, the sculptor Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Hopper, his wife Brooke Hayward, the English Pop-Art-artist Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol. Another guest was Beatrice Wood, "femme fatale" and model for the character of Catherine in Henri-Pierre Roché's novel "Jules et Jim", known through the screen adaptation by Francois Truffaut. Still, this was Pasadena, the home of gracious ladies painting watercolors on afternoon outings, so I said, “You better ask people, Julian, and make sure it’s OK.” Still no ChessBase Account? learn more > Real Fun against a Chess Program! Play, analyze and train online against Fritz. Beginner, club and master levels. Assisted play and calculation training. While Anna here is not exactly my type, she gets huge bonus points for helping push Chess towards the “sport” it could be.

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.”

Also present were Eve Babitz, 20, and her 17-year-old sister Miranda, who looked like an American version of Brigitte Bardot. Eve Babitz came with her friend Myrna Reisman who later married Canned Heat drummer Frank Cook. However, Walter Hopps had not invited Eve Babitz because he feared she would misbehave - as she had done on previous occasions. Babitz was annoyed about not being invited and appeared anyway. The photographer Julian Wasser was at the party because Time Magazine had sent him to report about the vernissage. Wasser was a good friend of Miranda Babitz. Eve Babitz: I don’t know why I didn’t want to go with Julian. I guess because it would have felt like crashing and it didn’t seem like the kind of party you could crash. By 1966 his parents—or his mother, anyway—finally agreed to let bygones be bygones about his dropping out of medical school. “They figured if I was at the Smithsonian,” he said, “I had a job.” Yeah,” he said, “I lifted him up and carried him over to the pool and asked everyone to give me thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I got at least one thumbs-down.”

By that time, I was living in this little paper bungalow—one room with a typewriter—on Bronson Avenue in Hollywood. I had a horrible old Chevy with stalactites growing down from the interior like cobwebs. I was writing my memoirs, of course, because I’d been to Europe (like Henry James) and wanted to write a book called Travel Broadens, about being Daisy Miller, only from Hollywood. Poor Europe never recovered was the point of my book. I thought of myself as extremely decadent and thought that anyone who had graduated from Hollywood High had nothing to learn. On San Vicente, as I drove home after saying goodbye to Walter, I ran into Ed Ruscha—or rather found myself driving parallel to him. At a light, we both opened our windows, and I said, “I can’t believe it, I just spent the whole afternoon with Chico.” In Hollywood, there was a genuine collector couple, Walter and Louise Arensberg, who amassed Duchamp works as though Los Angeles were a totally cultivated city where you’d expect people to know what was happening artwise in the twentieth century—like Gertrude Stein and her brother, who knew what was what practically before anything was anything. Only the Steins were in Paris, where art was in the air, whereas the Arensbergs were in Los Angeles, where if you could draw, you’d be good if you were Walt Disney.Eve Babitz: I also met Chico that first night at Barney’s. Except it turns out I’d already met him, only I didn’t remember. But he did. My mother had these poetry readings at our house, and he’d come to one of them. I was 14 or something. I guess I made an impression. Laurie Pepper: When Mirandi was young, she looked just like Brigitte Bardot. She was Brigitte Bardot’s twin. A few days after the party the exhibition was opened for the general public. Eve Babitz came with her parents and drank a couple of glasses of wine which put her in a relaxed and good mood. Marcel Duchamp and Walter Hopps were playing chess on a little pedestal. The father of Eve Babitz, who apparently knew something about the game, explained to his daughter that both were playing very badly. Then Julian Wasser had the idea to take a picture of Eve and Duchamp - however, an unusual one: Wasser wanted Babitz to play naked. Spontaneously Eve Babitz agreed. She was particularly pleased as she saw this as a kind of revenge against Walter Hopps, the director of the museum, who had ignored her when inviting guests for the opening party. Later she had second thoughts but Julian Wasser did not let her off the hook. I will not wear a hijab and support women’s oppression. Even if it means missing one of the most important competitions of my career” – Nazi Paikidze(On missing the 2017 Womens World Tournament)

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.A month or so later, I went to Barney’s and found Walter sitting at the counter alone with tacos and a beer, and I said, “So, are you going to forgive me?” Judit coming in at 4 soley for the reason that she is currently the best female in the world.I imagine that photo is old, you can look up current photos of her if you want. But you probably don’t want to. Still, Nazi Paikidze flipped the bird at a country forcing Sharia law. Wanting her to wear a garb and cover herself. And she’s like nah I’m hot and I want everyone to see it. Of course, New York was still New York, but right then, in downtown LA, the Museum of Contemporary Art was staging a huge Ed Ruscha retrospective, and Everyone was in town that day and the next for the parties. Plus there was a big Art Expo thing of international renown in some place they usually use for car shows.