Rrose Sélavy - Duchamp’s Female Alter Ego

Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp), 1920, Man Ray

Rose is a common name for women... but Marcel Duchamp took it one step further.  In 1921, a coy figure appeared on the stage to shock the international art world.  Duchamp, dressed as a woman wearing make up and pearls, posed as the infamous Rrose Sélavy at Andre Breton’s Surrealist Group in Paris – to roaring success!  Photographed by the preeminent Dada and Surrealist artist, Man Ray, Rrose challenged gender conventions and soon started to “create” her own artworks, appearing in exhibitions in New York and Paris.  Her name alone, evoking “Eros, cést la vie” or “arroser la vie” (Eros, that is life, or a toast to life) gave a further double entendre to her existence.

Rrose was a ready-made creator (as was her progenitor, Duchamp) and created many works with double meanings:  French Window/Fresh Widow and Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy?, referring to the French use of “sneezing” as a euphemism for orgasm.  Rrose’s “ready made” bottle of perfume on the cover of New York Dada magazine in 1921, “Belle Haleine Eau de Voilette” (Beautiful Breath of Veil Water) was another sensation (selling for $11.5 million at Christie’s in 2009.)

Marcel Duchamp, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Sélavy? 1964 (replica of 1921 original) Courtesy of MoMa

Rrose Sélavy continued to appear in New York and Parisian Art circles to great acclaim until a final dinner in her honor organized by Duchamp in Paris in 1965.  Like the flower she is named for, she transformed herself into many different colors and shapes, confounding and delighting the world at large and setting the stage for “gender bending” for generations to come.  Her name lives on, inspiring everything from collections of surrealist poetry to an Oyster Bar in Manhattan.

Portrait of Rrose Sélavy in 1921, by Man Ray