Sarah Lucas and Rrose Selavy

Both Marcel Duchamp and Sarah Lucas and Marcel Duchamp subvert ideas of gender in these images. However, David Hopkins in Dada’s Boys: Masculinity After Duchamp argues that Duchamp’s female alter ego Rrose Selavy is decisively drag: he is a man ‘dressing up’ as a woman. Lucas’ appropriation of masculinity is, on the other hand, more ambiguous. Lucas appears undeniably ‘masculine’ without having to alter her appearance. In doing this, she perhaps captures something more intangible in our understanding of masculinity as well as bringing to question our understanding of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Lucas’ work has been described as ‘sexist’ against men, which raises and interesting question: does a woman have the power to offend and/or ridicule a man in the same way that a man can to a woman? And if this is not the case, how justified are women in ‘man hating’?