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| Christophe Laudamiel (image via dillongallery.com) |
“Remembrance”, with its fruity top notes, woody heart and
a much-pointed-out linden (lime blossom) note, certainly was a distinctive
ambient scent. But it also seemed the least reflective of what I took to be the
exhibit’s overall intention: a commentary on the blandness and caution that
restrain commercial perfumery, and a passionate argument for perfumery’s
oft-ignored but well-deserved place among other fine arts.
Two of the scents addressed the infamous IFRA restrictions
that force perfumers toward a continually shrinking palette of materials, and
of course to re-formulate classics into watered-down or, as Laudamiel calls
them, “diet” fragrances. One of these, called “At Your Own Risk”, showcased
pure rose oil, sandalwood oil, moss extracts and mandarin oil – all materials
restricted in some way by IFRA rules – with a brilliantly pleasant effect: how
could anything that smells this good
be dangerous?
The other, “Fragile”, recreated the smell of fresh lemon
zest. The exhibition label stated that perfumers are not allowed to use
materials that can’t withstand high temperatures for a sustained period of time
(120 degrees Fahrenheit for 1-2 months!) and thus no lemon note this saturated
and hyper-real would ever find its way into a mainstream perfume. The label
also emphasized, however, that pure lemon oil alone wasn’t sufficient to create
the whole experience, and that it needed to be “retouched” with other materials
to achieve the desired realism.
Designing a scent could therefore be described, in the
simplest terms, as producing the scent of some thing using materials that are
not that thing. That magic – of a brain tricked into thinking it smells
something that is actually a fabrication – came to life most vividly in “The
Banana and the Monkey”, which lived up to its title perfectly. The label for
this scent cheekily declared that no “actual bananas or any monkey extracts”
were used.
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| (image via dillongallery.com) |
“The Banana and the Monkey” was also a quasi-celebration
of smells that are commonly deemed not pleasant enough to use in perfume, or
outright unpleasant (i.e. certain aspects of the smell of banana). Laudamiel
took that idea further with “Fear”, which sought to evoke that particular
emotion through the mineral smell of stones (alluding to a cemetery) and ferric
and metallic notes (rust, blood). It immediately called to mind Patti Smith
singing the line “Aluminum smells like fear” on R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. These two scents were the furthest of the
seven from what one thinks of as “perfume,” and serve as a terrific
illustration of what an olfactory artist like Laudamiel can do when not bound
by an abstract imperative for beauty (or a corporate creative brief, for that
matter – in his money-making life, Laudamiel authored Abercrombie & Fitch’s
Fierce).
The last scent in the series, “The Whip and the Orchid”,
was conceived as an olfactory amalgam of Robert Mapplethorpe’s self-portrait
with a whip and his photographs of orchids. This scent, with its elegant floral
and sensual leather facets, was arguably the closest to something that could be
sold as a personal fragrance, but no less a pure work of art than any of the
others because of it. Complex and incredibly memorable, “The Whip and the
Orchid” revealed the full extent of the vision, expertise and craftsmanship
that scent, as a medium, can accommodate.
In keeping with the anti-establishment attitude of the whole show, Laudamiel intends to publish the formula
for “The Whip and the Orchid” in the public domain at some point in the future.
An affable gallery representative couldn’t say where or when, but offered that
the publication of the formula is less an actual invitation to duplicate the scent than it is a “symbolic” gesture on Laudamiel’s
part to shed light on the nitty-gritty of an art form historically
shrouded in secrecy (and still today, largely controlled by commercial
interests).
Phantosmia is
only up through tomorrow, February 1, so hurry. Dillon Gallery, 555 West 25th
Street, New York.
