Lovely to see Object Oriented Ontology worked into scented deliberations. This is some of the most productive perfume commentary I have read in years. Our man Heidegger here is problematic-horizon of olfactory being-ness-but that ought be saved for donuts and coffee.
Thank you, that means a lot. Perfume deserves better metaphysics, and at present we have none. Heidegger is a tangle indeed, but he gives us the tools to wrestle with the scented-being-ness. As for donuts and coffee, they sound like the perfect setting for that horizon talk.
Wonderful piece, thank you. It puts me in mind of analogues across other arts forms - visual arts, music in particular – where one might receive a curated programme note to accompany a work. Although not marketing per se, these (when poorly considered) can pull us away from the potential experience of the being-intended of the thing. A fundamentally commercial nature compromises an appreciation of Perfumery as an art form, and this is all too often exacerbated by marketing. I prefer to read the critics like you and not the promo material :)
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I absolutely see the connection with art and music. I'm trying to extend the level of critical thought long afforded to visual culture to perfume. But because perfumery is so deeply entangled with marketing—and so much of that communication is confused or reductive—it becomes very difficult to excavate. It constantly risks collapsing into being just a product, and nothing more.
Yet when it's done right, it takes your breath away. I think perfume occupies a position similar to fashion, but fashion is more clearly demarcated—we have a cultural understanding of haute couture. Perhaps we need something like haute parfumerie, a conceptual space that allows us to engage fully with the depth and complexity of scent.
Not having studied philosophy or psychology I leave the intentional interrogation to you & others.
However, my perfumery hobby goes back well over 50 years. As such I frequently find connections between perfumes that are, to my nose, references of others. For example Belle Ame from Les Abstraits, to my nose references Chanel Le Lion, which in turn references Guerlain Shalimar. They are not the same but share some notes, however it is the overall effect in which they are in the same ball park
I agree. Perfumes, like all art, are referential. They endlessly cite each other, which makes it fun to connect the dots. The idea of newness is interesting too, since anything technically new is always already a quote of something that came before. Le Lion is most certainly a comment on Shalimar, but your link to Belle Ame took me by surprise. I have all three, I will resmell them, thank you
Your articles are a joy to read—and I do love the overarching intellectual project behind them. It’s funny tho—and I don’t intend to take this to the cliche of the subjectivity of experience— but I personally have difficulty experiencing perfume as a “picture-thing”, in that I never go to the intended referent (and I ignore so called “stories” behind fragrances), in that perfumes to me always are self-referential, and derive their power from the haecceity. So that even with something like Akro’s Bake, I perceive the intention, rather than a pie. [Additional edit: that’s not to say that I don’t entertain the intended fantasy or illusion, at times with enjoyment, but just to note that it’s more like a gesturing to the referent]
I wonder what Wittgenstein would think of all this.
Thank you, truly! Sorry, it has taken me ages to respond. And I love your point. I don’t think it contradicts the argument at all, but it deepens it. Think of the "picture-thing" as a kind of structure that allows us to think what is perceived is not what is actually before you.The reason I tend to believe fragrance functions as a picture-thing is that the last thing you actually perceive is the bottle and liquid in front of you. You hold the bottle and come into contact with the liquid, but what you perceive is the scent, and even then, you rarely think about its formula, unless it's poorly constructed and you’re confronted with the harshness of woody ambers or the cloying sweetness of ethyl maltol, for example.
When you smell En Passant, you think of lilacs, but there are no lilacs before you. When you smell Une Rose, you think of a rose, but that is not what you’re physically holding. The fact that this rose and a real rose are not identical in your mind is normal. What is being referred to may also be conceptual, not a specific object but a kind of idea, idea of masculinity or femeninity, for instance.
What’s crucial here is that when you smell a fragrance, you don’t think, “this smells like this bottle.” Instead, your mind reaches for other associations. I hope that makes things a touch clearer. As for Wittgenstein, alas, I am only now discovering him, mostly because my students are very keen, and he at the moment represents a gap in my education.
Thanks! It did become clearer and also more interesting in that, if I understood you correctly, it is the scent which is the picture-thing, which by extension means that all scents are picture-things. That, I find compelling (the thought does something to my imagination). As for Wittgenstein, I remembered him because of the term “picture” which figures in a section of the Tractatus. Of possible interest: “[t]he picture cannot place itself outside of its form
of representation”—which I guess is also what you mean, yes?
As Christophe Laudamiel once said: "If you smell something in a perfume, it's there, you're not dreaming, it's only a matter of finding where it comes from".
Lovely to see Object Oriented Ontology worked into scented deliberations. This is some of the most productive perfume commentary I have read in years. Our man Heidegger here is problematic-horizon of olfactory being-ness-but that ought be saved for donuts and coffee.
Thank you, that means a lot. Perfume deserves better metaphysics, and at present we have none. Heidegger is a tangle indeed, but he gives us the tools to wrestle with the scented-being-ness. As for donuts and coffee, they sound like the perfect setting for that horizon talk.
Wonderful piece, thank you. It puts me in mind of analogues across other arts forms - visual arts, music in particular – where one might receive a curated programme note to accompany a work. Although not marketing per se, these (when poorly considered) can pull us away from the potential experience of the being-intended of the thing. A fundamentally commercial nature compromises an appreciation of Perfumery as an art form, and this is all too often exacerbated by marketing. I prefer to read the critics like you and not the promo material :)
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I absolutely see the connection with art and music. I'm trying to extend the level of critical thought long afforded to visual culture to perfume. But because perfumery is so deeply entangled with marketing—and so much of that communication is confused or reductive—it becomes very difficult to excavate. It constantly risks collapsing into being just a product, and nothing more.
Yet when it's done right, it takes your breath away. I think perfume occupies a position similar to fashion, but fashion is more clearly demarcated—we have a cultural understanding of haute couture. Perhaps we need something like haute parfumerie, a conceptual space that allows us to engage fully with the depth and complexity of scent.
Not having studied philosophy or psychology I leave the intentional interrogation to you & others.
However, my perfumery hobby goes back well over 50 years. As such I frequently find connections between perfumes that are, to my nose, references of others. For example Belle Ame from Les Abstraits, to my nose references Chanel Le Lion, which in turn references Guerlain Shalimar. They are not the same but share some notes, however it is the overall effect in which they are in the same ball park
I agree. Perfumes, like all art, are referential. They endlessly cite each other, which makes it fun to connect the dots. The idea of newness is interesting too, since anything technically new is always already a quote of something that came before. Le Lion is most certainly a comment on Shalimar, but your link to Belle Ame took me by surprise. I have all three, I will resmell them, thank you
Please report back.
Le Lion caught on my watch strap & never got passed the momentary baby poop section. Spoiled both Le Lion & Shalimar for me. Had to sell both on.
Belle Ame helped me rehab Shalimar
Your articles are a joy to read—and I do love the overarching intellectual project behind them. It’s funny tho—and I don’t intend to take this to the cliche of the subjectivity of experience— but I personally have difficulty experiencing perfume as a “picture-thing”, in that I never go to the intended referent (and I ignore so called “stories” behind fragrances), in that perfumes to me always are self-referential, and derive their power from the haecceity. So that even with something like Akro’s Bake, I perceive the intention, rather than a pie. [Additional edit: that’s not to say that I don’t entertain the intended fantasy or illusion, at times with enjoyment, but just to note that it’s more like a gesturing to the referent]
I wonder what Wittgenstein would think of all this.
Thank you, truly! Sorry, it has taken me ages to respond. And I love your point. I don’t think it contradicts the argument at all, but it deepens it. Think of the "picture-thing" as a kind of structure that allows us to think what is perceived is not what is actually before you.The reason I tend to believe fragrance functions as a picture-thing is that the last thing you actually perceive is the bottle and liquid in front of you. You hold the bottle and come into contact with the liquid, but what you perceive is the scent, and even then, you rarely think about its formula, unless it's poorly constructed and you’re confronted with the harshness of woody ambers or the cloying sweetness of ethyl maltol, for example.
When you smell En Passant, you think of lilacs, but there are no lilacs before you. When you smell Une Rose, you think of a rose, but that is not what you’re physically holding. The fact that this rose and a real rose are not identical in your mind is normal. What is being referred to may also be conceptual, not a specific object but a kind of idea, idea of masculinity or femeninity, for instance.
What’s crucial here is that when you smell a fragrance, you don’t think, “this smells like this bottle.” Instead, your mind reaches for other associations. I hope that makes things a touch clearer. As for Wittgenstein, alas, I am only now discovering him, mostly because my students are very keen, and he at the moment represents a gap in my education.
Thanks! It did become clearer and also more interesting in that, if I understood you correctly, it is the scent which is the picture-thing, which by extension means that all scents are picture-things. That, I find compelling (the thought does something to my imagination). As for Wittgenstein, I remembered him because of the term “picture” which figures in a section of the Tractatus. Of possible interest: “[t]he picture cannot place itself outside of its form
of representation”—which I guess is also what you mean, yes?
As Christophe Laudamiel once said: "If you smell something in a perfume, it's there, you're not dreaming, it's only a matter of finding where it comes from".
Love is getting to know someone's soul 😂