Art, Adornment, Abstraction: Thinking Perfume

Abstract

Some perfumers and users of perfume have claimed that the more complex perfumes should be appreciated as artworks and not merely as adornments. This essay contributes to the recent philosophical discussions of the issue. Part I explores the relation between adornment and art as Stephen Davies conceives of them. Part II examines the arguments Chiara Brozzo and Cynthia Freeland give for the current existence of art perfumes. Part III offers one kind of formal case for art perfumery by exploring some limited structural analogies between perfume and music. Part IV proposes a set of distinctions among types of art perfumes. Part V discusses whether certain perfumes can be both art and adornment.

Keywords

• art
• adornment
• abstraction
• perfume
• music