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Jan
Eve Babitz – Girl of California in 70’s
Eve Babitz – Girl of California in 70’s.
Eve Babitz – a hedonist with a notebook, a muse, a bookworm, a party girl, a master of entrance, a journalist and an artist.
She always wanted to feel luxuriously involved in an unsolvable mystery, her favorite way to feel alive.
We could see her naked on the iconic photo of Julien Wasser.
Two brilliant minds, Eve Babitz and Marcel Duchamp, the father of Conceptual art, playing chess.
Eve was immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp.
In the light of the picture was shot, Babitz was 20-year old “It” girl in Los Angeles of 70’s.
“It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway.
It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here.
When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say it’s a “wasteland” and other helpful descriptions”.
In 1963, she asked Joseph Heller, the author of “Catch-22,” to find a publisher for her novel: “I am a stacked 18-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer”.
LONDON – FEBRUARY 01: (EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL FEBRUARY 3, 2007) Artist Peter Blake and actress Carol Holt recreate the scene of a chess game between Marcel Duchamp and nude model Eve Babitz at Sotheby’s auction house on February 1, 2007 in London. The original chessboard, made by Duchamp will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on February 5, 2007 and is estimated to go for GBP 200,000. (Photo by Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)
As has been noted Eve Babitz looked so sexy to be understood serious.
Known as a god-daughter of Igor Stravinsky, she was deeply involved in the bourgeois art scene
She was in an art groupie partying with Ed Ruscha, Kennets Price, Larry Bell…
Her beauty was zaftig like Brigitte Bardot.
At 23 she moved to New York working at an alternative “Village paper”.
In other words she had a chance to introduce Frank Zappa to Salvador Dali.
“I did not become famous but I got near enough to smell the stench of success.
It smelt like burnt cloth and rancid gardenias, and I realized that the truly awful thing about success is that it’s held up all those years as the thing that would make everything all right.
And the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you’re talking about.”
Her first published book “Eve’s Hollywood” showed her as a razor – sharp writer.
It was album of Southern California’s bohemians.
Critique describes it:
“a legendary love letter to Los Angeles by the city’smost charming daughter, complete with portraits of rock stars at Chateau Marmont, surfers in Santa Monica, prostitutes on sunset and Eve’s beloved cat, Rosie.”
Her memories from Chateau Marmont hotel, Sunset Strip and Venice beach became a testament of her era as a Robert de Niro movies or album by David Bowie
Babitz was compared to famous female writers as Joan Didion, Nora Ephron and Colette.
Her social circle was curious – Harrison Ford, Stephen Stills, Jim Morrison, Annie Leibovitz and Mr. Martin.
Earl McGrath joked that “in every young man’s life there is an one Eve Babitz”.
Eve enjoyed this nonmaterial sense of being among stars of 70’s
At that period anything seemed possible – for art, that night.
Especially after all that red wine.
Babitz, the voice of her generation, enjoyed a renaissance from 2010 due to reissuing her books by popular publishers as “Simon& Schuster”, “Counterpoint press” and “New York Review Books”.
At 2021 she died at the age of 78.
In D2Line we price individuality and love to share interesting stories for women.
