ARTICLE

A TRANSVESTITE ARTIST

Vern Bullough

Prof. of History, U.C.S.F.

Occasionally in examining material for my study of attitudes towards sex I run across cases of transvestism which might not be well known to readers of TRANSVESTIA. One such case is the artist Marcel Du- champ who is best known for his cubistic NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE which he painted in 1912. Duchamp was for his time what was called a free spirit, and was very strongly opposed to the strict gen- der roles imposed by society. He appeared briefly in René Clair's film ENTR ACTE, performed as a nude dancer in the ballet Reláche by Picabia and Satie, and most notably for our purposes he occasionally dressed in woman's clothes, and even utilized himself as a model for some of his women figures.

To emphasize his disavowal of strict gender roles he took the name of Rose or Rrose Selavy as a pseudonym in 1920 and signed some of his works with this name. It was as Rose Selavy that he was portrayed on the cover of dadaistic magazine. New York Dada in 1921. Several photo- graphs of him in woman's garb were taken by his friend Man Ray and have survived. Two of them are reproduced in Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Grove Press, 1959), namely figs. 19 and 21, both taken in 1921. Duchamp was also interested in collecting puns, and some of his puns were collected by Robert Desnos and published under the name of Rrose Selavy in Littérature, No. 7, 1922, again giving em- phasis to what he felt was the feminine side of his nature. Perhaps it was this feeling of the masculine in the female, and the feminine in the male that led him to create his second most famous piece of art, a caricature of the Mona Lisa with a moustache. He used the name Rrose Sclavy fre- quently in his business transactions and his book THE GREEN BOX, published in 1934 in Paris, was published under the title edition Rrose Selavy. I have not been able to find out how his wives (he was married at least twice) accepted this dual identity, but they at least tolerated it, as did his friends. In short Duchamp might be included among the pan- theon of famous transvestites.

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