Slavy”, also spelled Rose Slavy, was one of Duchamp’s pseudonyms. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase “Eros, c’est la vie”, which may be translated as “Eros, such is life”. It has also been read as “arroser la vie” (“to make a toast to life”).
Slavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray showing Duchamp dressed as a woman. Through the 1920s Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated on more photos of Slavy. Duchamp later used the name as the byline on written material and signed several creations with it. These included at least one sculpture, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Slavy?. The sculpture, a type of readymade called an assemblage, consists of an oral thermometer, and several dozen small cubes of marble resembling sugar cubes inside a birdcage.
The inspiration for the name “Rrose Slavy” may have been Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan’s