Marcel Duchamp turned to ordinary manufactured objects in order to distance himself from traditional definitions of an artwork, the artist, and the creative act. Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? is a particularly elaborate example of the genre he called "readymade," mass-produced items that gained new and unexpected meanings when Duchamp exhibited them, sometimes with cryptic inscriptions or titles.

The container is a painted metal birdcage with vertical bars clipped to lower its height. Inside are 152 simulation sugar cubes, which are actually cubes of marble procured from hardware stores as a means for removing built-up lime scale inside teakettles. Duchamp liked the amusing contradiction between light sugar and heavy marble. A mercury thermometer makes a joke on the marble’s coldness. In the cage are also two small glass dishes, and a cuttlebone—food for the absent bird—that sticks out through the bars. The absurdist title, written in block letters on the underside, highlights the name of Duchamp’s female artistic alter ego.