Culture writer and social analyst Denyse Beaulieu has been writing about the potential argument for perfumery as fine art over at Grain de Musc, specifically in her posts "A Few Considerations on the Critical Gaze" and "A Few Additional Comments on Perfume as an Art Form" -- though this is not a new topic for her, and her website is filled with reviews of fragrances that spread verbal feelers into a wide range of subjects, from punk rock to the psychosexual, the femme fatale in Hollywood filmography and the ties between art and artist (to name just a few).
Perfume is considered a wearable craft (or potentially even an applied art) by the majority of consumers and critics -- too ephemeral to be fine art (which appears to need a constant fix in space so that critical evaluation can progress even as the work itself remains static: sculpture, drawing, paintings, photography, literature and video fill this category) and yet maybe too airy-fairy to properly take its place in the applied art category (furniture, jewelry, textiles, woodworking, ceramics and more).
While in NYC two weekends ago, I visited the Museum of Arts & Design (formerly The American Craft Museum), a recently completed several story space in Columbus Circle that appears to be devoted to the very topic of Skilled Craftsmanship vs. Fine Art. The museum website states that its mission is to celebrate "the creative process through which materials are crafted into works that enhance contemporary life."
In other words, the museum's curators examine the impact of artistry in everyday objects, such as Madeleine Albright's brooch collection, an exhibition of ceramic pieces (including vases, jars and sculptures that incorporate everyday forms and utensils) and two gallery floors filled with highly creative works crafted from the medium of lowly, common paper.
I don't have any personal irons in the fire when it comes to the debate around art vs. fine art in general, or perfumery as fine art specifically. I believe that fine art can incorporate perfumery, and works that center around perfumery may even be considered fine art (Christophe Laudamiel's "Scent Opera in Four Movements" is a pioneer in this particular classification), but most perfumery is produced for commercial purposes, so is it really any more "art" than a lovely bakelite bangle, an unorthodox sheathe or a particularly architectural pair of stiletto boots?
Ms. Beaulieu's recent focus on the topic of perfumery as fine art made me revisit Yosh Han's Trompeur, a fragrance with a provocative connection to the world of contemporary literature -- namely, literary fraud JT Leroy and his/her once critically acclaimed but now thoroughly disgraced novel, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
The story goes that indie perfumer Yosh Han was contacted via telephone by the woman masquerading as JT Leroy and commissioned to create a perfume to accompany the release of the upcoming film of his/her allegedly autobiographical novel. The fragrance was designed to be "earthy and overtly sexual by blending bay rum, vanilla and fig oils" as a testament to the struggles of the novel's protaganist (allegedly, JT Leroy).
The whole JT Leroy hoax fell apart soon after, the film was considered an abysmal failure, lawsuits started flying and Yosh Han quietly withdrew her support from the project, but then along came the fragrance 'Trompeur' (French for misleading, betrayer, deceiver), which Yosh Han fans claim is a near carbon copy of the perfume Han created for Leroy, though now renamed, mixed, bottled and distributed personally by Yosh Han herself.
Apparently, Ms. Han didn't take kindly to getting roped into a fraud, and this seemed her way of regaining ownership of her own work. Besides, who's going to fault her for taking back the forumla for a fragrance that was commissioned in a blizzard of lies?
For while the JT Leroy persona was a cruel ruse, Ms. Han's creation is the real deal -- gentle, persuasive, sweet with a twist. The fragrance is so obviously a labor of love, made all the more poignant that it was Yosh Han who was deceived.
Because the formulation is a pure perfume oil rather than mixed into an alcohol base (Han creates all her fragrances as oils), the end result is exceptionally smooth and clings to the body rather than distinctly projecting from the wearer. I've experimented with varying applications, and Trompeur appears to do best when applied over the entire body (from shoulders to ankles) rather than merely dabbed on the wrist. The scent is not a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination, and a few dabs on the wrist simply can't hold up to the onslaught of the real world once you step out into the day.
This can be considered a problem due to its cost. The price is high, even for a Yosh Han perfume, and a good number of consumers may not be particularly eager to pay top dollar for a fragrance that requires a heavy application. I've been wearing it for only a few weeks yet have powered through almost a third of the bottle.
Trompeur does, however, have excellent longevity, and its vanilla-sandalwood-musk trinity at the finish beautifully complements intimate conversations and close proximities. Massoia is said to be one of Ms. Han's favorite scents, and it's utilized here with great skill, like a slight breeze through the coconut grove, a hint of an island paradise waiting at the end of a long, hard road.
But how does the perfume relate as a piece of art? Does it match what a piece of literature can do? Unfortunately for Trompeur, it seems as though it was originally created (under its former name) to accompany a fake, which makes any case for its artistic depth ring hollow.
It's a lovely work, check. It evokes a sweet and maybe even somewhat sultry mood, check. But from what I gather, the novel "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" was a story filled with psychological and physical abuse, sexual torment and mental anguish. Where Ms. Han's soft, tender work of perfumery fits into that particular picture is hard to fathom. Even after the entire circus of JT Leroy was revealed as a hoax and Han later released 'Trompeur', there isn't a dark, vengeful splinter to the thing.
But where the collapse of the Leroy hoax rocked the New York art world, humiliating once eager champions of the novelist (Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr, Courtney Love, Tatum O'Neal, Billy Corgan, Shirley Manson and Carrie Fisher, to name just a few) and reverberating throughout contemporary literary circles for years, Han's fragrance is just a curious sidenote to the scandal, not strong enough a statement on its own to be heard above the ruckus.
Denyse Beaulieu argues that perfume, while once an applied art, has transcended its original application (to counteract the poor hygiene of life in the pre-Indoor Plumbing Age) and could now potentially be considered fine art because it has no real contemporary application other than pleasure and impulse, but even the Leroy literary persona, while completely, thoroughly and utterly fake, had power enough to captivate New York's downtown art scene for years, making careers and then later humiliating the scene's movers and shakers.
Is there a contemporary perfume that's come close to doing the same? Fine Art has the power to document social movements and even create cultural firestorms (see: impressionism) -- are such things even possible for a perfume to accomplish?
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