Picking Up the Scent: Chicago Art Luminaries Share Their Relationships to Fragrance
by Gender Assignment Guest Blogger, Matt Morris
View of Matt Morris’ studio wall arranged with perfume advertisements and other ephemera discovered in drawers of his father’s office desk.
The art world has, it seems, always smelled of perfume. Across the past century, ‘visual art’ came under comment in key moments where art practices came to involve smell or at the very least employ conceptual language about scent in objects, text works, and immersive installations. Artists like Leonor Fini and Salvadore Dali designed flacons for the Surrealism-inspired Elsa Schiaparelli: Fini’s flowering bodice design held the 1936 Shocking; Dali’s baccarat crystal sunrise encased in a gold seashell was made for the 1946 release of Le Roy Soleil. Years later in 1983, Dali would release his first perfume under his own brand. There are now a honking sixty-nine different fragrances from the Dali brand that has outlived its namesake. Other celebrity artists like Andy Warhol and Niki de Saint Phalle have lent their names and aesthetics to signature scents.
In this way, the distinctions between artist and perfumer have blurred so that designers in niche houses like Serge Lutens, D.S. & Durga, Régime des Fleurs, or Blackbird are generally thought of as artists in their own right. Meanwhile, there have been artists whose conceptual practices have led them to the use of scent in galleries. Among the technologically experimental research projects by British artist Paul Etienne Lincoln, in 1985 he produced In Tribute to Madame Pompadour and the Court of Louis XV (Perfume Set), which included vials of perfume and honey. Glasgow-based Canadian artist Clara Ursitti pioneered artists working with perfume chemistry that had previously been mostly arcane, protected knowledge of major fragrance manufacturers: in 1993 she made Eau Claire, a small bottle of scent produced from the artist’s own bodily secretions. Artists like Brian Goeltzenleuchter and organizations like the Institute for Art and Olfaction continue to explore the potential for the olfactory as a meaningful dimension of artistic experience.
Installation view of "Falling for You" Act 1: Joel Parsons' arrangement of Catherine Sullivan's work.
At the level of Chicago, no one could be said to be doing more to enrich the discourse around scent and art than Debra Parr, Professor of Art and Art History at Columbia College. Parr deserves her own full articles about her research, curating, and teaching around scent; she deserves many such articles. In 2015, she curated Volatile!, an exhibition at the Poetry Foundation on the intersection of poetry and scent. Last year, the inimitable Kate Sierzputowski and Mary Eleanor Wallace organized Dinner Party at Tusk in Logan Square; I was honored to be included among a group of artists who presented “courses” of olfactory artworks in four seatings across two days. Then in December 2017, Falling for You saw Memphis-based Joel Parsons intervene in an installation by Catherine Sullivan, organized by Triumph in Pilsen. Parsons embellished Sullivan’s tableau with caps and lids from his collection of mostly vintage perfume bottles, elements that read as miniature pink-and-metallic post-minimalist sculptures.
Throughout these cultural shifts around art and perfume, I’ve had occasion to chat with a number of artists and arts workers in Chicago’s community who share my enthusiasm for the possibilities for profundity that perfume carries. For this piece of writing I circled back and reached out to them to see if they would respond to a questionnaire about their personal relationships to wearing fragrance, in the spirit of fashion magazines sidebars, chunky September issues in anticipation of fall styles, and alternative points of access for what these creatives do. There were so many more folks than had time to participate in this round or could fit in a digestible essay like this; I think this is the first of more such collections of responses to sketch out more thoughtfully the ways that what we’re smelling fits into our identities, memories, and visions for artistic thriving.
–MM
Io Carrión is an artist and curator originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She obtained a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in photography. She has also attended the Grasse Institute for Perfumery (GIP) in southern France and ISIPCA in Versailles for her perfumery studies. She is a multidisciplinary artist who uses personal narratives to inform her work. Recent curatorial endeavors include “The Way In” a survey of contemporary Puerto Rican art since the 1990’s at Popular Center in Puerto Rico and “Los Turistas” at Diablo Rosso Gallery in Panama.
When did you start wearing fragrance?
As a kid I loved to get a spray of my mom’s perfume and my grandmother would always give me a splash of cologne after a bath. I purchased my first perfumes as a teenager.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
I’m drawn to its powerful link to memory. And response. Smell is more directly in contact with the emotional regions of the brain than any of the other senses. So we first respond emotionally to an odor then we identify it. I also think it is fascinating that each of us has a unique odor identity, like a fingerprint.
What are your favorite notes or ingredients to wear?
Light and fresh. More drawn to clean citrusy scents. Neroli is a particular favorite. I like crisp sparkly notes, nothing too heavy.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
The avoidance of heaviness perhaps. Like scent, some things don’t need to be heavy to be profound. There’s meaning in light and playful too.
Mutual friends have told me that you've been making fragrances too. I'd love to hear about what you're working on.
I am actually working on the bottles now so I am really enjoying how scent has made me experiment with form. It has allowed me to play with different materials, which in turn inspires new scents.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
I am originally from Puerto Rico so the colder weather allows me to experiment with bolder scents I wouldn’t normally wear. I noticed quite a few of the new perfumes launched in the fall have ginger notes so it will be interesting to try some spicier scents.
Photo credit: Stephanie Bassos
Jaime DeGroot founded the corporate and private art consulting firm, DeGroot Fine Art, in 2016 after more than a decade working in arts advising and administration. Utilizing her Master’s degree in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jaime strives to create meaningful connections between her clients and local network of artists, galleries, and vendors. To learn more about her business visit www.degrootfineart.com. She lives in Chicago with her artist husband, Geoffrey Todd Smith, who mostly wears Les Exclusifs de Chanel "Sycomore."
When did you start wearing fragrance?
Like many little girls of the early '80s, my first scent was probably Love's "Baby Soft" which will forever hold a place in my heart along with the smell of Cabbage Patch Kid dolls, but the ground shifted for me when I got a bottle of Debbie Gibson's "Electric Youth" perfume later that decade. I wore so much of it my older brother complained and I was banned from wearing it until that Halloween when I came up with the idea of dressing as a skunk-- who would smell like "Electric Youth," naturally.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
I wear very modest amounts of perfume to the point that I am usually the only one who can smell it, making it almost entirely personal. That said, I love helping people navigate their interest in it. I've had a lot of discussions with artists about the connections between perfume and fine art. Reading about it is a large part of my interest as well. My freshman year of college I read Diane Ackerman's "A Natural History of the Senses," and was astounded at the idea of someone crying at a piece of sulfur because of its exquisite shade of yellow, that you could tag butterflies in a eucalyptus field somewhere, or visit a laboratory where they had test tubes of "kitty litter" fragrance. I wanted to travel for sensory experiences like her and have spent a lot of time since then in places like New York, Paris, and Amsterdam meeting with perfume houses and the perfumers themselves, hearing wonderful stories and meeting some exceptional personalities. When I can't get my fix on the road, I also enjoy reading perfume reviews on the Internet. These tiny critiques, ranging from hilariously snarky to passionate, are truly one of life's little delights.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
I am not an artist myself, but rather someone who has formally learned to appreciate it. As an art consultant, I share my experience with my clients using vocabulary I have built up around my sensory experiences. When I started training my eyes to make connections between art and life, my world lit up, and I love illuminating it for others in this way. I equate fragrance to art often, in that learning to connect what you smell to your brain is very similar to learning art history. I read once that everyone's nose is equipped similarly and to have a "good nose" essentially means you have taken the time to equate what you know already to what you smell. Learning about fragrance is like putting a monocle up to your sniffer-- your world can become that much more electric with this sense being brought into focus, making food and alcohol taste more interesting and certainly adding a heightened awareness to your perception of the arts.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
Autumn is a terrific smell season in Chicago, with its singed leaves and petrichor (earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil). I chose this time of year to get married a few years ago in part so that its associated smells and the perfume I wore could always be connected to the love it brings. We held our reception at an old dive bar, The California Clipper, which is known for being haunted by a woman wearing white and smelling of perfume. For my wedding day, I wanted to subtly evoke the mystical feeling of a ghost from another era and chose Santa Maria Novella's "Marescialla" to finish off my look. This mace-forward fragrance was created in the 1600s to scent the gloves of a Countess who was later burned at the stake on suspicions of witchcraft. It is one of the original scents of the famous Italian apothecary, and indeed smells like an old medicine cabinet with top notes of nutmeg and citrus followed up with woods. I wear new perfumes every year, but will always circle back to this for our anniversary.
Photo credit: Stephanie Jensen
Rosé is a multidisciplinary performance artist living in Chicago. Their work is in direct conjunction with their spiritual practice as a Reiki healer, spiritualist and initiate of Ifa and Lucumi, an Afro-diasporic religion.
When did you start wearing fragrance?
I guess you can say I started wearing fragrance sometime around the age of 8 or so. I used to spend a lot of my time with my grandmother and she had a dazzling vanity set along with a fabulous collection of perfume bottles. I was always captivated by the ones that were up on the high shelf. The bottles were like architecture. Some of my favorites at the time were Elizabeth Taylor's Passion, Christian Dior's Poison, and of course Chanel No. 5. I was hypnotized by there powdery scents and learned properly from my grandmother that you must "walk into the scent" so that it graces your body. My grandmother always had the finest taste even when she didn't have the most money. Thinking back now, I learned much about escape from my grandmother. She always wanted to have the best of everything.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
It's one of the first things I notice about someone and the sexiest thing a person can do. I still use scent as a form of seduction. There is something desirable about being seduced by something that you can't see that really turns me on. Scent lets you know how aggressive some can be or how soft someone's touch is. Sometimes your scent can linger in a room. It lingers like a shadow and people still think of you. Having a scent commands a sort of attention and it gives you a following. That person will always remember you.
What are your favorite notes or ingredients to wear?
I am attracted to earthier scents like tree sap, grass, smashed wood, swamp blooms, and tobacco leaf. I also adore muted floral notes like ylang-ylang and touches of jasmine. I am also a sucker for white musk, sandalwood, myrrh, and Peruvian amber.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
Since scent really triggers memory I often think of certain things while building performance and installations, burning incense prior to the start of a performance or even during. I often use materials such a wet dirt or cover my body in mud, pools of water strewn with hibiscus leaves and orange linger. Pieces of metal and iron linger around space treated with rainwater. Using or thinking about the scent in a performance or installation creates much more of an environment or a site. An environment that is captivating and holds you, prisoner,
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
Oh yes, when the weather starts to cool I prefer spicier notes to wear that are much more warming such as black pepper, cinnamon, and red musk. Even bergamot which I find can be a peppery citrus. I like my fragrance during the cooler and colder months to really pierce the skin.
Photo courtesy of Joshua Kent
Joshua Kent is an artist working in writing, sculpture, and performance. Situated in the attic of St. Francis House, a grass-roots community when they live and work, Kent’s practice explores the embodied dynamic of an immersive life practice. More about Joshua’s work can be found here: Joshuajjkent.com
When did you start wearing fragrance? When I was young I read in a children’s rainy day activity book that one could brew perfume with flowers from the backyard. I marveled that such alchemy could occur with an empty salt shaker, rubbing alcohol and lilacs stolen from neighbors. As I waited for the scent to cure, I dreamt of how I would soon dab the essence of spring behind each lobe. Of course, my recipe flopped, and upon my return, I was greeted with the aromatic failure of brown, rotting matter—perhaps an apt metaphor for my relationship to scent, or a foretelling of how I would orient my aspiration towards elegance, a vehicle by which I might transcend my class and gender. We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool? I tend to stick with one scent, and only recently have begun to combine fragrances through the day. I always wear dark, muskier smells with heavy base notes. As we enter the colder months I find myself yearning for a touch of citrus, or some quality of airiness. This is remedied by fresh flowers (tuber roses, jasmine plants)—smells I would detest on my body for long period, yet which I adore when appointed in a room. Why do you think you're interested in personal scent? I think of Babe Paley wearing a blood red dress by Charles James. Swaths of fabric gather and are stitched at the side, giving the impression that the wearer is forever lifting the hem off the ground, revealing endless folds of off-white pleats. I think of perfume as I think of this image. The impossible moment: the alchemical yearning bottled and held. A careful orchestration of contrasts: she is always entering but never spoilt. Muybridge reduced to a single vessel. A blossom long past, one might still hold. How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist? My work explores instances of bounty amidst professed scarcity. Informed by a desire to democratize aesthetic experiences, I create images in the world that hold together seemingly incongruous class signifiers. And so I pile the donated roses atop the compost heap at the shelter where I live and work. I light a scented candle in the bathroom of our crumbling halfway house for eighteen: in memory of that which is small, (and too often feminized and dismissed) but could be called a mutual longing for something more, a rose-scented sublime amidst the brutal neglect of the world.
Jessie Mott. Serpent Twins, 2017 Pen, watercolor, acrylic marker on paper, 24” x18”
Jessie Mott, based in Chicago, IL is an emerging social worker and visual artist best known for watercolor animal drawings and collaborative animations with the artist Steve Reinke. Mott’s work explores themes of queerness, eroticism, power, and vulnerability. More about Jessie’s work can be found here: jessiemott.com
When did you start wearing fragrance?
80s pop star Debbie Gibson created a fragrance called Electric Youth, of which I was overjoyed to receive on my 9th birthday. A neon pink spring floated diagonally within the champagne-y liquid. It was a sticky July afternoon and I immediately sprayed it on my neck. It was sweet with a sensationally immature fruitiness that somehow managed to not be cloying. I remember the way it changed on my skin, mixing with my child sweat through the end of the birthday night reverie. When I choose fragrances now, I tend to steer clear of the fruit, but I recently made an exception for Byredo’s Pulp, on the opposite spectrum. It verges on souring plums, apple flesh funk, damp fur, jammy candies.
I dabbled with other drugstore perfumes in my youth but the real desire for scent emerged when I read in a fashion magazine, circa 1994, that Madonna wore a particular tuberose. My heart exploded with this news, a tangible way to connect with my idol. My father kindly tracked down the perfume for me at some fancy store in Manhattan and brought me a sample. I was quaking with excitement, thinking I was about to be one with Madonna. Unfortunately, however, the headiness of white flowers with something sharply synthetic--I don't know, gasoline?--was an olfactory assault. I was not ready. I felt distressed that I could not attach, but I dropped it on my pulse points anyway.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
I mostly wear scents that I’m interested in, more so than for another person. It is a form of self-expression, but also a way of feeling grounded. It elevates my mood. There is something thrilling about experiencing the changing of a fragrance throughout the day. It may start out cardamom in the morning but end up leather by evening.
I like to associate times in my life with particular scents. It is amazing how you can smell something and be transported so viscerally back to another world. I remember smelling the floral heart of Anais Anais on my mother’s coat when I was little, and feeling so comforted by it.
Choosing scents can create opportunity to forge new identities, conjure old memories and create new ones. A portal to new desire, a resurrection of haunting love. When the right alchemy emerges you get the tingles.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
The animal features prominently in my work and as it happens, I have an affinity for animalic scents.
Most often, I am making drawings/watercolors. There is always vacillation between structure and all out violence/bleeding of color. The tension between control and fantasy is something I am interested in, and there is a similar dynamic in fragrances as well. I have a collection that ranges from sophistication to a certain skank - a refined chypre iris to an aggressive damp pelt. You never know what you will need for a day’s work. Art and scent are both experienced in a primal way, deep in the lizard brain. I prefer engaging with scent and art making that is rooted in the marrow. Arousal of all the senses. There is enough disappointment. We need pink peppercorn, tangy smoke, beaver sacs (synthetic, obviously), felled trees, vetiver. Color choice and scent linked by intuitive processes.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
My go-to cool weather fragrance has been, for over 12 years, Heeley’s Cardinal. I am a bit obsessed with it. It is an incense scent that has a chill to it. My favorite feature of it is a frankincense note, but it also has a bright element that is hard to identify. Some say linden, but I am unconvinced. It is refreshing for a gothic church. I have many happy memories associated with it, so I can’t give it up. I also have a sample of MEMO’s African Leather that I am toying with at the moment. It has soulful leathery warmth and spice that is kind of intoxicating. The bottle is so beautiful, with a cartoony cheetah on it; I am a sucker.
Willy Smart. Page 18, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. The Centenary Edition. London, 1878. 2018 Etched mirror, blush, flower waters
Willy Smart is an artist and writer who works in presentational and propositional forms. Willy makes lectures, sculpture, and publications that propose extended modes and objects of reading and recording. Willy directs the conceptual record label Fake Music (fakemusic.org) as well as a personal website (willysmart.com)
When did you start wearing fragrance?
Fairly recently — maybe two years ago. Though I’ve enjoyed the quiet loft of florals for a lot longer.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
I like the repeatability of perfume, and I like the misdirection a fragrance affords. I like flowers without flowers.
I recently read Alain Corbain's great book on scent in the French cultural imagination. In one chapter, he chronicles the shift in 17th century as the vogue for musky scents was overcome by a new proclivity for florals. Corbain explains this floral ascendance as a symptom of a bourgeois mode of seduction, which consists of ‘setting the mood.’ A musky scent—essentially a poopy scent—draws attention to the body of its bearer; while a floral whiff, obviously not of the body, draws attention to the wearer’s surroundings: this room, this curtain, this slant of moonlight. I don’t really think I wear fragrances for ‘seduction’ purposes but I do like the way a floral allows me a kind of dispersed presence. Or maybe the floral is about a fantasy of a entirely different body: she wants her body the body of the bloom.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
There is something surfacey about fragrances — both in the way perfume is often imagined as frivolous and of course in the literal application of a fragrance to my skin’s surface. I’m attracted to similar aesthetic moves: using materials or that operate on the level of suggestion rather than of definition; or working in depth with ’superficial’ forms of language like wordplay and description. I think I am learning as much for my practice from reading perfume reviews than I am from wearing them and I certainly do more of the former anyway.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
Annick Goutal’s Ninfeo Mio!
Michelle Wasson. November Rain, 2017 acrylic on raw canvas, 95” x 74”
Michelle Wasson is an internationally exhibiting artist based in Chicago, IL. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, REFUSALON in San Francisco, and Brand Library Art Center in Glendale, CA. She received her MFA from Washington University in 2001, and has served as faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently co-directs Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago. More about Michelle’s work can be found here: Michellewasson.com
When did you start wearing fragrance?
It was the year I realized that I would be an artist. In 1985 Christian Dior released their mysterious perfume Poison. Scent and memory are so indelibly linked that when I recall that iconic purple bottle on my childhood dresser, I hear Purple Rain on the turntable and feel my favorite grey parachute pants on my skin. I was developing an enduring love of color, epic guitar solos and dance.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
Scent can set or correct the mood of my day. Fragrance has the power to set an intention, evoke a strong memory or recall a place of safety or comfort.
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
Some works in progress have been simmering for more than a decade. It’s rare for me to make a painting—like a single note perfume--in one sitting. I would rather have a few concoctions go awry than stick to the same, safe scent everyday. If a subject, process, or sensorial experience becomes comfortable, it’s time to move on. I’m drawn to complexity and not at all concerned with creating a signature scent for myself—nor do I subscribe to a singular camp of painting. I find binary scents for men and women boring so I experiment with samples and trade bottles with friends—just as I prefer to layer paint to create complex color or texture.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
I escape from the harsh Chicago winter to a fantastic imaginary Middle Eastern souk. My husband and I share Myrrh & Tonka Cologne created by Mathilde Bijaoui for Jo Malone. It’s an incredibly warm and lush scent with a top note of hay lavender, a middle layer of myrrh and a base of vanilla, tonka and almond.
Roland Miller, co-director of Julius Caesar, applying one of the four parfum that comprise’s Matt Morris’ Copycat Killer, 2017
Matt Morris is a piece of marzipan. He has wanted to be Germaine Cellier for quite some time, both nationally and internationally. He is a contributor to a foundation that the artist set up to raise money for the purchases of future additions of perfumes to a growing archive. He is educated, and now works as an educator. He’s a Fairyologist. More about Matt’s work can be found here: http://www.mattmorrisworks.com
When did you start wearing fragrance?
There was a white wicker shelf with several bottles of fragrance that my father and mother wore when I was growing up. I remember Cool Water, 1988, by Davidoff, its minty marine notes, how they would smell of my father’s skin, and the ways a sweeter amber facet would come forward on me when I would put it on.
Why do you think you're interested in personal scent?
I’m interested in nascent forms of becoming ourselves, those ways of sensing and expressing something understandable about a person in ways that aren’t visual. I want to think about the ways that we are marked and sometimes mark ourselves. I’m obsessed with art historical precedents for disrupting identity signifiers with perfume, such as Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy and her signature scent Belle Haleine eau de Voilette, 1921. While scent as a means of attraction is certainly always at play, my wearing perfume is first of all a form of self care by which I make a space for my own fantasies, cast protection spells on myself, and dare to attempt the very treacherous work of remembering.
What are your favorite notes or ingredients to wear?
Orris (the root of iris), very creamy sandalwood notes, rubber and plastic and anything that signals artifice in intelligent ways, milk, ambrette, mimosa, heliotrope, saffron, peaches and apicots, a thoughtfully developed violet, galbanum, tuberose. I also have a soft, sweet spot for notes of marshmallow, Play-Doh, cola, waxiness, powdery cosmetics….
How might your preferences for fragrance reflect your tendencies as an artist?
I broke a bottle of perfume in the gallery where I had my first solo exhibition after completing my BFA (on purpose). Henceforth, there have often been olfactory dimensions in my art. Last year I made Copycat Killer, a set of four hand-blended parfum based on the fragrances my sibling, my parents, and I wear. The four directors of Julius Caesar (and sometimes substitutes for them) graciously sat in the gallery space wearing those fragrances, layering the notes of the original perfumes references and my memories of those smells changing on our skin, which mingled into the body smells of Kate, Josh, Roland, and Tony.
We're headed toward the start of fall: do you have favorite scents that you wear as the weather starts to cool?
When I want to sparkle, Bois des Iles by Chanel. When I want wooden spikes, Santal Majuscule by Serge Lutens. When I’m re-watching Buffy, Hemlock Shade by Lvnea. When I want to smell like cement and clay and southern mourning and childhood trauma, Only Children Weep by Sixteen92. Most autumn days, I will want to smell like Iris Silver Mist by Serge Lutens.