Perfume : Is it Art, Design or Craft?
Warning! May contain philosophy...
As well as being a master perfumer, Edmond Roudnitska was a writer and thinker who argued that perfumery should have an equal status to arts like poetry and painting. To this end he drew up a fine arts wheel, which he adapted from the one devised by a French philosopher known as Alain. The two are identical except Roudnitska included perfumery in his scheme.
His wheel is divided into segments with each representing one of the ways that an artistic impulse can be channelled. They progress in a logical order round the wheel and each segment is divided into two parts: pure form at the center (e.g. dance) and an applied form at the edge, in this case pantomime. (Strangely for one who speaks the language of Molière, Roudnitska doesn’t include theatre in his deliberations.)
It’s also possible to place craft disciplines adjacent to the wheel, which for example could put cabinet making in relation to sculpture and architecture while leaving it outside the charmed circle of the arts.
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Looking at the top of the wheel, the first segment deals with line. According to Roudnitska, the pure form of line is the arabesque, a linear and rhythmic pattern based on foliage. In Muslim culture the arabesque is associated with the divine.
In its applied form, line becomes design, which could be anything from blueprints to bill boards; all industrial products involve an element of design.
Roudnitska’s Fine Arts Wheel :
After line comes volume, which is divided into the pure form – architecture, and the applied form – sculpture (or should that be ‘pure’ sculpture and its applied form architecture?) and then there is painting, luminosity, movement, vocal sounds, music and odours.
Roudnitska thought perfume has an affinity to both music and the arabesque and he placed it between the two. He wrote that perfume is related to music because it shares the verbal tropes of notes, chords and harmonies. As well as that they both change over time. We could speculate that by using the term arabesque Roudnitska implied that perfume may reflect an element of the divine, having as it does -like music- the power to influence us in ways that cannot be understood by the rational mind. This view that would have been shared by Henri Bergson – a philosopher who wrote elegantly about the role of the intuitive, and who Roudnitska cites in his writings. The Catholic church and other religions around the world also take this view, with the use of incense being almost universal.
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Perfume as an Arabesque
Roudnitska described Diorissimo as being an arabesque on the theme of muguet, by which he meant it's an abstraction based on muguet. The arabesque is a practical way of evoking the smell of a flower without resorting to a life-like copy. Those who create naturalistic perfumes were criticised by Roudnitska as merely aiming to reproduce natural odours, the sort of thing pre-modern perfumers did in the late 19th century. At that time, perfumers only had natural oils to work with. Without synthetic odorants they were limited to an all natural palette, and perhaps as a consequence of that their inspiration tended to be limited to natural subjects too. This combination of nature derived materials and nature derived ideas led to a situation where perfumers often produced works that were more figurative than fantasy based, something that can be seen in the prevalence of flower based names that were given to perfumes around the turn of the 20th century.
In contrast to the naturalistic perfumes of the Pre-Modern era, Roudnitska cites some of the great classics of the 1920’s : Chanel N°5, Arpège, Mitsouko and Shalimar, which are marked by abstract elements that go beyond natural smells.
Where Pre-Modern perfumes often smell like a re-creation of something in nature, Modernist perfumes like N°5 constitute artistic fantasies based on something derived from nature, in this case an abstract floral bouquet and the icy cold of the Arctic.
Seeing that Roudnitska puts his own works Femme, Eau Sauvage and Diorella in the same rank as these abstract classics, he may well have taken what that Baudelaire wrote in 1860 as his credo – ‘who would dare to assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?’
Primary and Secondary Forms
Roudnitska designated the artistic fantasy on the one hand, and the recreation of nature on the other as ‘primary and secondary olfactory forms’. He writes: the primary form of pure perfumery neither represents nor evokes anything in the real world.
This primary form represents what he calls pure olfactory arabesques. He goes on to state that the majority of perfumes of the 1980’s are ‘pure inventions’, which take no inspiration from nature but can in certain cases -by their technique- work like nature, and they can also ‘have the spirit … and give a type of pleasure’ which is comparable to that produced by nature.
In contrast, perfumes which express secondary olfactory forms are representative or evocative perfumes that ‘utilize floral, vegetative or animalic accords which evoke leather, tobacco, “exotic countries” etc’. Roudnitska considered this type of work to be artistically inferior for the reason that he thought it to be more or less imitative, and thus a less creative mode of composition.
He does admit however that Diorissimo is an ‘evocation’ of the odour of a sprig of muguet (Lily of the Valley). But he also says it is a work of pure perfumery. This is because as well as the odour of the flower, it includes the flower’s undergrowth, and what he calls rosy and ‘rustic’ aspects. Roudnitska was a keen gardener and he spent a lot of time on his hands and knees sniffing hic Convallaria, plants he would have known well. As well as not wanting to harm the plants by picking their flowers, it seems he was also aiming to represent the ambience of their surroundings in a sort of olfactory framework.
He supports the claim that Diorissimo is a work of pure perfumery by saying that ‘the form of muguet is just a pretext for the creation of complex accords, which give to the floral bouquet green and fresh counterpoints, which allow it to evoke ‘nature, springtime and youth’ - qualities which are abstract fantasms which are not inherent to the odor of muguet itself but brought to it by the imagination of the perfumer. Even though Diorissimo evokes muguet, it is a fantastical evocation that goes beyond the odor of the plant itself into a fantasy realm.
In brief, according to Roudnitska, a perfume with a well developed fantasy element can be a work of the first order, but without it the work will be of secondary merit only.
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Perfume as an Idea
When composing a perfume Roudnitska would work from memory. (This is now standard practice).
A perfumer works with their ideas of smells, which are then manipulated using the perfumer’s creative ideas to develop an initial perfume idea into a full blown fantasy (or arabesque). Jean-Claude Ellena (who was mentored by Roudnitska) writes ‘the art of the perfumer [lies in their] capacity to compose using … memories, passions and beliefs.
In parallel to this creative work, the perfumer uses their technical skills to express these memories, passions and beliefs in a concrete form, which is realised in the structure of a perfume.
What Roudnitska called Pure Perfumery is essentially the evocation of a fantasy the perfumer has applied to the reality of a source odor, which they work up into an abstraction that will go beyond the world of natural smells and into the realm of the olfactory imagination.
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The Status of Perfume as an Art, and How to Judge it
With his fine arts wheel, Roudnitska was not only asserting his belief that perfumery is a creative discipline that should enjoy equal status with the arts, he was also setting out criteria by which this olfactory art should be judged.
If a perfume is too deeply rooted in its source material (be that from nature, or an idea found in another perfume) it will not transcend the source and will thus remain derivative of it. In that case the new perfume will be representative (in the sense of being more or less a copy of something that already exists) or it will be evocative (in the sense of trying to capture an experience, rather than interpreting it).
If however, the perfumer can overcome the limits of their source material and their own ‘tendencies to inertia’ (as Roudnitska puts it) they may succeed in composing a perfume that -first of all- expresses an embodiment of their own, original olfactory idea, which, if -secondly- it is expressed in a ‘recognizable, unique and coherent way’ the result will be what Roudnitska dubbed a Grand Parfum – which he judged to be a work of the mind, and the equal of a painting by Van Gogh, for example.
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Is Perfume Art, Design, or Craft?
The last and posthumous release by Roudnitska is Le parfum de Thérèse, a private opus that Roudnitska made for his wife and then worked on for decades thereafter. It is his last word on themes already expressed in Diorella and Femme, amongst others. If any perfume is an art, this is surely be one.
Sad to say, many so called fine perfumes do not hold a candle to Thérèse; by comparison they are just odorous designs, carried out with more or less passable craft skills and decent materials. The ideas, the passion or the commitment may often be lacking.
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So, in answer to the question: is perfumery art, design or craft? the answer is yes, it can be all of them, although the distinction between these categories may have little to do with the technical skill of the perfumer.
Roudnitska and Francis Kurkdjian are both highly skilled perfumers, but where Roudnitska claimed to be an artist, Kurkdjian denies the idea. The difference between their oeuvres is not just a matter of style, it concerns what they are trying to achieve. Both Diorella and Thérèse have over-ripe facets which make them not ‘easy’ smelling; Roudnitska created works that subtly provoke and you could put Femme, Chiffon and Mouche in the same category, which all use the note of cumin -which some people find reminiscent of human sweat. Eau d’Hermès in also another challenging perfume. By contrast, Kurkdjian takes a different approach that is more akin to Grand Luxe: the one is art, the other has no such pretension.
Jean-Claude Ellena thought that modern industrial perfume is a product, which -unlike most artworks (those of Andy Warhol and a few Postmodernists excepted)- is designed to be reproducible en masse. So if perfume is an art, it is more like a printed poster than a hand made painting. In this sense much of Postmodern perfume resembles applied art, or a piece of design work. By this analogy, artisanal perfumery -which is handmade and in small batches- has an element of craft practice attached to it.
But besides the technical fabrication of the juice there is another side to the practice of perfumery; the intent behind it.
Whether in the temple, or the boudoir, there has always been an ulterior motive attached to perfume: Spiritually, it is used (to put it crudely) to attract the attention of the gods; Sexually, to attract a desired mate. Socially, perfume is used to present a pleasant aura to others around you, to signal status, belonging to one tribe or another, and at its most basic level, the intent of perfume is to allow the wearer to not smell bad.
In the Postmodern era (which Roudnitska was not part of and railed against) perfumed products are defined and made with an end use in mind. They are not simply created to have a pleasant smell, they are designed to meet an end use; a perfume for a new shower gel will be designed to be used in a shower and not to be diffused in a casino. Likewise, a scent for a twenty-something, lively, single professional female, will not be designed to suit a twenty-something, fun loving, male manual worker. They are designed to say different things that appeal to different markets.
Whether a perfume is classed as being ‘fine’ or ‘functional’, it is basically a utilitarian product, which has been conceived of, and designed, to carry out a specific purpose. Industrial mass produced perfume tends to fall into three categories which can be illustrated by three examples:
A scent for shampoo; this is designed to hide the unpleasant off notes of a base product
Le parfum de Thérèse; which Basenotes reviewer cheapimitation describes as ‘art and poetry in the most subtle and unexpected place’ and
Kurkdjian’s perfume Grand Soir; which for me conjures up the idea of a crafted amber brooch. Its ornamental smell lies somewhere between industrial product and the love poem by the perfume philosopher.
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There's a bit of science goes into it too...
Nicely done. So many wonderful threads here to tug at. I love that you pointed out the realism of early perfumery. I wonder if that maps onto general realism trends in the arts (painting and literature). David Shii wrote a book about it if I remember.
That’s really interesting that Ellena saw it as a product. Different era, maybe. Maybe he read “Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” That where my brain went.