Monday’s Muse: Eve Babitz

Eve Babitz; American artist, author and muse, observer and observed, and an irresistible blend of boho intellectual and L.A. party girl (complete with short-lived romances with men she met throughout 60s, from Jim Morrison to Ed Ruscha), deserves to be celebrated because, ah… what a life!

Eve Babitz began her independent career as an artist, working in the music industry for  Atlantic Records, designing album covers for Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield – her most famous being a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again.

Her written works have been published in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines. She is the author of several books including Eve’s Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company; Sex and Rage; Two By Two; and L.A. Woman, all of which mark the cultural scene of Los Angeles during that time – offering numerous references and interactions to the artists, musicians, writers, actors, and other iconic figures that made up the scene in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Perhaps the biggest blow to Babitz lifestyle was that she got severely injured when ash from a cigar she was smoking ignited her skirt, causing life-threatening third-degree burns over half her body. Sadly Babitz became reclusive after this incident and has spent the last decade or so in her one-bedroom apartment just off Santa Monica Boulevard with her orange-eyed cat, Zsa Zsa (thank god for feline company).

{image above: Eve Babitz, chessboard, and Marcel Duchamp, 1963.}