Since Walter had left LA, I’d seen him twice in Washington, but then he’d gone to organize the Menil Collection, in Houston, which is famous for having more money than the mere Smithsonian. He was probably down there, filling Mrs. de Menil’s head with his digressions. So good for Nazi! Crushing it in chess, looking good doing it, and standing up for her gender like a boss. Have to love it. That’s partly why she gets the number 1 spot. But mostly because she is the hottest chess player. Somehow it was decided that we were all going to Kienholzes house in Laurel Canyon. It was crowded and rustic and I was beginning to feel left out when Walter sat beside me and offered to show me Ed’s show, “among other things,” if I came to the gallery the next day. 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.

In June 2015 Wasser made some of the photos he had taken during the Duchamp exhibition 1963 public. In some of them, you see the face of Eve Babitz. Julian Wasser's photo has often been quoted and referred to, among others by US WGM Jennifer Shahade. In her version, the roles of man and woman are changed and the man is naked.Billy Al Bengston: Larry and I got our suits from thrift stores. We’d raid them. That’s how we got our schmattas. What’s a schmatta? Look it up. L.A. had the best thrift stores then. You could get a suit for a dollar. The public opening was very crowded and lots of fun. I got myself some red wine and wandered over to a raised platform where Marcel and Walter were playing chess, and my father came by and watched with a cynical expression. (He told me later, “That Marcel is not very good, I could have beaten him on the fourth move. And your friend Walter can’t play at all.”) And because we were in Southern California—in Hollywood even—there was no history for us. There were no books or traditions telling us how we could turn out or what anything meant.

When he later was asked how he hit upon the idea to let Eve Babitz pose naked with Duchamp, Wasser replied: "Eva was not like other groupies. She was something special. Apart from that, she looked fantastic. And I knew that she would enchant Marcel Duchamp. And that's what she did!"

In the beginning of the 1920s Duchamp dedicated himself more and more to chess and in the middle of the 20s he almost stopped his artistic work to become a chess professional. He published a textbook and from 1924 to 1933 he played in five Chess Olympiads for the French team. In 1942 Duchamp left France and moved to the US. Together with other artists who had emigrated to the US, for example, Max Ernst, he started to become more artistically active again. Max Ernst shared a passion for chess with Marcel Duchamp and Duchamp's friend Man Ray, and Ernst himself created a number of chess sets and chess sculptures. 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.

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.” Mirandi Babitz: Laurie said that? That’s nice. Well, I suppose I did look a little like Brigitte Bardot, a brunette version, I guess. Did you know I once had sort of a thing with Vadim [Roger Vadim, the French producer, the onetime husband of Brigitte Bardot]? Yeah, I was trying, unsuccessfully, to hook up with Paul Gégauff, the French screenwriter, mostly because my husband was hooking up with his wife, Danièle. I actually found Vadim kind of repulsive, so I wasn’t actually up for this switch, and didn’t speak to him the next day. So, yes, I accidentally slept with Vadim, but I didn’t mean to.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.” 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.