Perfume Is Higher Than Art.

Chandler Burr's recent exhibit at The Museum of Art and Design, aspirationally entitled The Art of Scent, 1889 - 2012, has thus far been considered a minor failure. *Online reviews generally find little fault with any one aspect of the show, but it was noted that Burr failed to find convincing correlations between fine art and perfume, that perfumers themselves reject the label of artist, and that Burr misunderstands the fundamental relativity between natural art mediums and art itself. The Blake Gopnik article linked here was embarrassing for Burr, as the reporter's take was casually observant of how artists (and artisans) used earthbound pigments (egg tempera, hand-mixed), to develop home-made paints, which flies in the face of the curator's declaration that "Art must be artificial; it is impossible to create art entirely with nature."

Burr's idea is a little misleading. Art can, in fact, be derived entirely from nature, when one considers that man is a product of nature, and that all art comes from man. Whether he chooses to use natural materials, or man-made materials, is his prerogative. Whether his ideas are "natural" in some symbiotic-earth sense is irrelevant in the discussion, since Burr is suggesting that art, and not its message, is always partially synthetic. Which brings us to why the exhibit fails: while interesting, Burr and MAD have in no way drawn a clear line linking the laboratory technicians at Givaudan to paintings by Van Goh. As Gopnik said, "Burr, self-taught in aesthetic theory, seems to have conflated the artifice found in art with a chemist’s idea of the artificial, and now he won’t let go of that conflation." Yikes. No Christmas card for Blake.

But it struck me while reading the various viewpoints on MAD's show that perfume is distinctly separate from art because it is both design, and an appeal to smell, man's most primitive sense. Design is a higher human functionality than scent, but in perfume the aesthetics of the designer meets the feral animal instinct of whatever ancestral lizard our family tree stems from. We have built on our primal urges since the beginning of time, gradually wandering down its path to our current state of wincing in shock at the smell of Sécrétions Magnifiques. We wince, and smile, and exhale ecstatically at that which moves us, on a level further afield than art evaluation. Art is intellectual and operates on no fewer than a dozen principles of cultural context (historical, geographical, etc.), theoretical origin (Freudian, Jungian, nihilistic, etc.), and acculturation (modern, postmodern, Eastern, Western, etc.), with no tolerance for reductionist response. Man is expected to process art cognitively before he can relate to it spiritually. We expect this of ourselves, whenever we display art. To expect otherwise is to show a stroke victim a Mondrian and then wonder if he's drooling in delight.

But because design in all its forms is functional first and foremost, perfume gets detoured into a different realm, one where goals are either being met, or not met, and the very act of having goals (material expectations) flies in the face of that one artistic principle that overrides all others - individualism. Art is defined by Jonathan Fineberg as a mode by which "to say the things that are one's own." The man who added two extra prongs to the common dinner fork was not saying anything for himself - he was speaking for the fork. But an artist is communicating, translating part of himself into a tactile message, and bundling it up for broadcast at whatever station he can, be it MAD, MOMA, the Guggenheim. Art is limited to the success of that broadcast. If the message is faultlessly translated and well presented, hanging beautifully on a wall in Vienna, and a thousand viewers cannot receive its meaning, then that connection between artist and audience is not made, and the piece is a failure. If a fork with extra prongs grabs food better, then it is easier for everyone to finish their steak. The fork is successful.

Is perfume successful on its own? Because the perfumer is usually not a consideration to the person buying and wearing his product, I think it's pretty obvious that yes, perfumes independently achieve varying levels of greatness. Unsurprisingly, this continues to cement the notion that perfumery is not art, but design. But are some forms of design greater than the sum of all of fine art's multitudinous parts? Let's consider this: when experiencing a wonderful smell, we are transported not to a deeper part of that smell, but to a deeper association, which rapidly becomes a mental image. Sniffing Chanel N°19, notes of galbanum, iris, petit grain, and vetiver collude to transport the wearer or bystander, via the nose, to grassy forests wet with dew. One might close his eyes and imagine a shaded meadow somewhere, shimmering green. We know that iris and vetiver and other flowers are green, and we recognize that the content of this perfume is all that smells green. Ultimately, the core response is not simply these associations, but either an inner smile, or an inner frown. The smile means the smell is liked, in turn meaning grassy meadows are liked. The frown means it isn't, and grass is better off on its own. Those who like it will want to keep smelling it, and therefore will gravitate, usually unconsciously, toward the wearer (who, if he shares the sentiment, will continue wearing N°19). Those who dislike it will tend, also unconsciously, to avoid the wearer, who will cease wearing it if he feels the same way. This social compass is pre-calibrated by our natural response mechanism to fragrance, and the perfume's dependability is based on its potential for accurate guidance.

When experiencing a wonderful work of art, on the other hand, we are also transported to associations, but these associations are subjectively divorced from content. Our feelings are not guided by knowledge of content, but rather by knowledge of how we feel despite the content. For example, I personally feel that Julian Schnabel's plate paintings are philosophically utter rubbish, the intellectual equivalent of elevating an Italian spousal spat to aesthetic, bordering on the comical. Yet despite my distaste for Schnabel's Neo-Expressionist aesthetic, and its comparison to similar but superior German Neo-Expressionist works, I like it. And if I did not like it, my dislike would have nothing to do with Neo-Expressionist philosophies. But the plate pieces are okay with me. They're okay because I happen to feel that disintegrated, re-purposed dinnerware is visually interesting. I associate these works with that interest of mine. The success of Schabel's aesthetic hinges solely on whether or not I want to grasp what I see by Schnabel.

Perfume's aesthetic success hinges not on whether or not I, or anyone else, wants to grasp a smell by the perfumer. It rests on whether or not the perfume smells good, regardless of personal predilection. I like vetiver in a passing way, but find it boring. If I were to happen across a traditional vetiver perfume that somehow worked the note favorably for me, I would have that visceral response of "this is good." I would want to keep smelling it. Since we all smell things the same way, but associate these smells differently, you could not argue that this perfume smells good only to me. The argument must be that this perfume smells good despite me. The perfumer's intent to convey dry roots piled on a pier in Haiti is not important. This is not even legitimate content in the discussion, as there is no intellectual stimulus for which to extrapolate on that idea, other than personal experience in Haiti, and I've never been there. Yet this hypothetical vetiver perfume would still create feelings of rapture within me, a need to keep smelling, keep wearing, keep using.

My association of liking the fragrance connects with a suspicion that others will like it, too. And therefore, hopefully, people will compliment me on it, hang around me a minute longer than usual because of it, and perhaps even attempt to wear it themselves. This fragrance has proven itself to be independently active as a social cohesion, something beyond stuffy university lecture halls and library research. Perfume is, literally and figuratively, a social cohesion agent, more fluid than art, and much more free. If it transcends art, this is perhaps unsurprising, since we tend to value our personal connections over whatever we learn from a textbook or a museum plaque. One could say that putting perfume in a museum not only misses the point, but actually sells it egregiously short. It's more than that, and deserves better.









*One Last Note: Reading across the blogosphere, there have been a couple of articles on whether or not the discussion about perfume being art is important. If it's not important, then perhaps perfume isn't even worth writing about at all. If people write about something, it's because they're thinking about it. Our thoughts are worth the time, and so is fragrance, and I think the discussion is one that aims at definition, further understanding of something we all love, and an ultimate context for it in the postmodern world. Let's not be so dismissive of the perfume-as-art debate, because further exploration will elevate the medium in the eyes of the world, if concise arguments are made.