Marcel Duchamp was a man of many faces, and one of his faces was a woman: Rose Sélavy. Her name was a pun on the French phrase, Eros, c'est la vie, meaning ‘Love, such is life.’ Duchamp dressed as Rose for a series of portrait photographs by Man Ray, and even created readymade sculptures using the photos. Rose was Duchamp’s literal personification of his interest in androgyny—the unity of male and female about which he stated 'If one has become the Androgyne one no longer has a need for philosophy.'
