L.H.O.O.Q. and wrote "Moustache par Picabia / barbiche par Marcel Duchamp / avril 1942". As was the case with a number of his readymades, Duchamp made multiple versions of "L.H.O.O.Q." of differing sizes and in different media throughout his career, one of which, an unmodified black and white reproduction of the "Mona Lisa" mounted on card, is called "L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved". The masculinized female introduces the theme of gender reversal, which was popular with Duchamp, who adopted his own female pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy, pronounced "Eros, c'est la vie" ("Eros, that's life"). Primary responses to "L.H.O.O.Q." interpreted its meaning as being an attack
Marcel Duchamp collection buying and selling rare manuscripts, books and art. Rrose Sélavy, and the other pseudonyms Duchamp used, may be read as a comment on the fallacy of romanticizing the conscious individuality or subjectivity of the artist, a theme that is also a prominent subtext of the Readymades. Duchamp said in an interview, "You think you're doing something entirely your own, and a year later you look at it and you see actually the roots of where your art comes from without your knowing it at all." From 1922 the name Rrose Sélavy also started appearing in a series of aphorisms,