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Eve Babitz (May 13, 1943 – December 17, 2021) was an American visual artist and author best known for her semi-fictionalized memoirs and her relationship to the cultural milieu of Los Angeles. Babitz was born in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Mae, an artist, and Sol Babitz, a classical violinist on contract with 20th Century Fox. Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had Cajun (French) ancestry. Babitz's parents were friends with the composer Igor Stravinsky, who was her godfather. In 1963, her first brush with notoriety came through Julian Wasser's iconic photograph of a nude, 20-year-old Babitz playing chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp on the occasion of his landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show was curated by Walter Hopps, with whom Babitz was having an affair at the time. The photograph is described by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art as being "among the key documentary images of American modern art". Babitz began her independent career as an artist, working in the music industry for Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, making album covers. In the late 1960s, she designed album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Her most famous cover was a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again. Her articles and short stories appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. She was the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood, Slow Days, Fast Company, Sex and Rage, Two By Two, L.A. Woman, and Black Swans. Babitz died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on December 17, 2021, at age 78. Answering questinons about those iconic pisc in her late years: when the photograph began showing up on things like posters for the Museum of Modern Art, and Nude Descending a Staircase became almost interchangeable with Nude Playing Chess, and Duchamp being so immortal, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to be identified. Maybe it would be better to be “and friend.” On the other hand, if they’d asked anyone else—or if I’d chickened out and some other woman was immortalized—then, hmmph…. Recently, when a woman called and said she was doing a book on Duchamp on the West Coast and could she please use that picture, I said, “You’re not going to use it on the cover, are you?” But when I found out the cover photo was to be of Marcel alone, I felt insulted. Mixed emotions hound me after nearly thirty years of mixed emotions. I want to be on the cover, immortal, but I don’t want anyone knowing it’s me. Except my friends and people who like it.
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