Portrait Of Rose Sélavy

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.'