test
Search publications, data, projects and authors

Free full text available

Article

Undefined

ID: <

50|dedup_wf_001::ec4110fda22eba7daf97e0f430ceda6b

>

·

DOI: <

10.7202/1059002ar

>

Where these data come from
Two media expectations
Keywords

Abstract

Depending on technologies of diffusion and production of smells, the olfactory dimension of contemporary art increased in importance since the 1990. Despite its contemporaneity, olfactory art echoes with several fin-de-siècle fictions, where authors have imagined uses of perfume overcoming the categories of the useful or the pleasant, and thought about perfume in terms of aesthetical experience. For instance, in his novel Against The Grain, Huysmans describes the experiments of an aesthete convinced of the artistic potential of perfume. In this case, the olfactory compositions are diffused by spray bottles (invented around 1825) and fans, but some other fictions picture imaginary or anticipative technologies, foreseeing not only an olfactory art but also the way to implement it. Thus, in Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s The Future Eve, the main character, Edison, details the technical devices allowing Alicia, the android of his creation, to exhale the characteristic smell captured from a real woman. The focus on the mediality of smells stresses how olfactory art is grounded in a much older history, drawing a bridge between two fin-de-siècle.

Your Feedback

Please give us your feedback and help us make GoTriple better.
Fill in our satisfaction questionnaire and tell us what you like about GoTriple!