The Fine Arts department University College PXL-MAD Hasselt offers ‘Art Sense(s) Lab’: an artistic, academic English Master programme in Visual Arts. This is the first Master program about the use of the lower sense in the arts. Continue reading Art Sense(s) Lab English Master
Tag Archives: academia
Art Scents: Perfume, Design and Olfactory Art
An excellent must-read academic piece by Larry Shiner on the confusing but ever-relevant subject of perfumes are art. (For our brief take on the matter, see The Art of Scent & The Scent of Art.)

Claims that perfumes are art have been made before, but a recent art museum exhibit of a dozen perfumes under the title ‘The Art of Scent’ has raised the issue with a new insistence, although with an absence of theoretical justification. Part 1 of the paper develops an aesthetic case for perfume as an art form by answering Beardsley’s and Scruton’s arguments against odours (and implicitly perfumes) as the basis for aesthetic objects and works of art. Part 1 concludes that perfumes can in fact manifest the required structure, temporality, symbolism and expressivity for art status. Part 2, on the other hand, develops a contextualist case against perfumes as works of fine art by analyzing a typical contemporary art practice involving a perfume and arguing that, by contrast, typical perfumery practices lack crucial elements required to make perfume an art form and that perfume should be considered one of the design arts. Part 3, instead of trying to reconcile the impasse between the conclusions of Parts 1 and 2 with a theory of the fine arts that combines aesthetic and contextual elements, instead chooses to follow Dominic Lopes’ proposal that in resolving claims to art status we pursue analogies and ‘paths’ offered by the established individual arts. Using music as an example of a long established art form and the art quilt as an example of a recently established art, I suggest what it might take for ‘art perfumes’, or more accurately, ‘art scents’, to emerge and become justifiably included among the fine arts.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
OLFACTION & PRESERVATION
Special issue co-edited by Adam Jasper and Jorge Otero-Pailos
Deadline September 30th, 2015
Future Anterior invites essays that explore the relationship between olfaction and preservation from historical, theoretical and critical perspectives. We seek scholarly papers that take stock of the recent surge of interdisciplinary research on olfaction and speculate on its relevance and impact on the practice of preservation.
“The Sense of Smellâ€Â workshop in Cambridge
The UK Semiochemistry Network, comprises a varied group of people who are interested in the sense of smell – olfaction. Here is the program for the next workshop including contributions from Christophe Laudamiel, the Weizman Institute, Thomas Hummel an many other leader scholars and professionals. Continue reading “The Sense of Smellâ€Â workshop in Cambridge