ESSAY

From Image to Smell

The Role of the Olfactory Sense in Contemporary Art Experience

by Jonas van Kappel

June 15, 2023

Editorial Note

Jonas van Kappel reviews multisensory experiences in art museums, specifically, the role of smell in aesthetic contexts with a philosophical yet practical angle that evaluates its effects on museum visitors. This essay was adapted from Van Kappel’s thesis research where he provides an in-depth look at audience responses to olfactory works such as Alexis Blake’s winning entry at Prix de Rome’s 2021. Her work, rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash, which consisted of a performance, publication and smell installation, was exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum from November 13, 2021 to April 24, 2022. Blake collaborated with Sissel Tolaas, who created the smell of decay that was present in the performance and installation. What do visitors experience when they must go beyond their sight?

The Prix de Rome is organized and financed by the Mondriaan Fund in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Keep an eye out for this year’s four shortlisted visual artists as their new works will be presented from 14 October 2023 to 3 March, 2024.

1.1. Olfactory Interventions in the Museum

In the last two to three decades, art audiences seem increasingly open to art that has been designed to deliver a multisensory experience.¹ The landscape of modern and contemporary museums abounds with examples of artworks and art exhibitions that focus on scent interaction, and we are witnessing a growing interest in olfactory art.² In Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts (2020), olfactory art historian Shiner provides the following definition of olfactory art:

Works of olfactory or scent art, then, involve an intention to use actual odors in a distinctive-making way that typically gives the resulting artwork its effect in a recognized visual art setting.³

The forerunner of scent art in the modern sense of the word is Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). In the 1930s, the artist noted that his colleagues were concerned solely with visual art, which he disparagingly termed ‘retinal art’.⁴ Duchamp, however, sought experimental forms of expression of the mind by appealing to different senses, whether or not simultaneously. In fact, his first olfactory artwork was a Gesamtkunstwerk: the fêted Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (1938) at the Gallerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris (fig. 1), in which Duchamp acted as artist-curator in collaboration with Surrealist artists such as Man Ray, René Magritte and Max Ernst. Together with Austrian-Mexican artist Wolfgang Paalen (1905-1959) he designed the main room. In this ‘staging’, a collection of oak leaves, grasses and ferns carpeted the gallery floor and further on, visitors encountered a water-filled pond, complete with water lilies and reeds. Furthermore, due to the installation of a coffee roaster, visitors said that throughout the space they could discern the ‘smell of Brazil’, aromas of roasted coffee, and from the ceiling also hung heavy sacks of coal from which an acrid odor slowly filtered down.⁵

On the basis of photographic material and in line with the Surrealists’ associative artmaking practice, it seems plausible to me that here, art spectators were offered certain tools to tap into their subconscious and project a personal narrative onto the space. The scents might have contributed to a performative, aesthetic effect of the work, described by Stevenson as phenomenological proximity.⁶ As a result of this effect, spectators feel as though they almost become part of what they smell, acting in a fiction that is perceived as intensely authentic, which may blur the boundaries between imagination and reality. Thrown back onto one’s own body and associations, the visitor can arrive at a personal interpretation of the artwork aided by an olfactory stimulus. In this way, smells in an art installation can shift the focus of the audience from what the work represents to what it arouses in the body: a physical sensation that transforms the installation into a theatrical reality. The evoked location is not simply presented but almost reanimated or made concrete, and the art spectator is invited to participate actively and multisensorially in the art experience and thus to reflect on one’s own physical interaction with the work. After all, odors connect us with the world around us in a very direct, pre-linguistic manner.

The emerging popularity of olfactory art may have its roots in the so-called Experiential Turn of the 1960s. Art historian and curator Von Hantelmann (2018) reflects on the influence of minimalism that fundamentally altered the relationship between art object and spectator by acknowledging the visitor’s physicality.⁷ With this, she argues that ‘performativity’ as an analytical premise can provide cues for interpreting contemporary art. In the discourse of contemporary art, she continues, the concept of performativity is used frequently whether relevant or not, because it is confused with the genre of ‘performance art’ and because the term is used solely to categorize artworks. However, pursuant to Austin’s speech act theory, Von Hantelmann argues that, in relation to art, the performative is about a specific approach rather than classifications, creating an innovative perspective on what produces meaning in an artwork. Performativity centers on the effect of the physical presence of the audience and the reality-producing dimension of an artwork. The meaning of an olfactory artwork, for instance, manifests in the experience it induces in the visitor and occurs specifically in relation to the art spectator. Exhibitions in museums thus produce aesthetic experiences that are subject-related, rather than simply work-related. As such, the art object does not appear to be decisive in terms of meaning production, but serves more as a means of self-reflection. The influence of the Experiential Turn therefore indicates a methodological shift in contemporary aesthetics: when it comes to olfactory works, the concept of representation and the autonomy of the object seem to give way to performativity as an aesthetic departure point.

Psychologists such as Cirrincione⁸ as well as Spence in Scenting the Anosmic Cube (2020), reflect on an installation or exhibition such as that of Duchamp and the use of additional odors to augment the museum experience. According to Spence, it is difficult to predict the exact results of adding sensory stimuli, and they do not necessarily turn out to be ‘positive’ either in terms of a visitor’s emotional response, or in terms of their subsequent recollection of their multisensory experience:

As such, those considering whether to introduce scent into an art gallery or museum setting would do well to consider what outcome they hope to achieve, and whether it will necessarily deliver the positive effects that are hoped for, however they may be defined. (…) What is more, in the case of ambient scent, one probably needs to think carefully about whether to try and make the scent congruent with the visual display, and if so, quite which sort(s) of crossmodal congruency to go for.⁹

Despite the unpredictable influence of (in)congruency between visual and olfactory material, a combination of visual and olfactory dimensions in an exhibition is guaranteed to create interesting effects, because the two modes of perception stimulate our brain in different ways.¹⁰

The legacy of Duchamp and experiments with new media and materials led to the use of smell in the work of artists associated with Fluxus, conceptual art, Arte Povera, land art and feminist movements in the 1960s and 1970s.¹¹ An example of a work from this period is the Peanut Butter Floor (1962) by Wim T. Schippers. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen acquired the concept of this conceptual work in 2010 and in contrast to earlier versions, which were square, the installation at the museum measured 4 x 12 meters. Besides the substance of peanut butter as an artistic material, and its visible texture, the odor that the sandwich spread radiates through the space plays a major role in the art perception of this work. The scent can affect the museum visitor and, in the moment of the experience, arouse powerful personal memories or cultural associations with, for instance, Dutch sandwich culture. In this way, the emphasis in meaning production shifts from the autonomous art object, the artist’s subjectivity or intended meaning, towards the (inter)subjective and experiential qualities and effects of the work.

Edward Kienholz’s The Beanery (1965), is perhaps one of the most popular examples of an olfactory installation, and was part of the Stedelijk Museum’s permanent collection (fig. 2).¹² This installation requires audiences to step inside a small version of a dingy bar reconstructed in every detail, which contains seventeen figures that instead of faces have clocks, complete with numbers and hands. But time has stopped ticking on these clocks and stands still forever. The facelessness of these figures and their anonymity inspire a certain detachment and alienation in the visitor who, although participating in the bar experience, remains an outsider. This effect is amplified by the artistic use of sound and smell: the typical barroom jukebox music wafts through the space, which is saturated in the smell of beer, mingled with the odors of sweat and tobacco. Kienholz created this smell using a homemade recipe that involved mixing his own urine with beer, grease, mothballs and cigarette ash.¹³ In this space, the malodorodorous synthesized smell draws the museum visitor even closer to the art, as the phenomenological proximity of the evoked location and the affective connection between subject and art installation are underlined.

Fig. 1. Anonymous, L’Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme with Hélène Vanel performing L’Acte Manqué at the opening: a surrealist dance as a protest against fascism in the form of a ‘hysterical attack’, referring to the mental condition of ‘hysteria’ attributed to women at the time, 1938. Paris: Galerie des Beaux-Arts. Foto: dou_ble_you/ Flickr. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

Fig. 2. Edward Kienholz, The Beanery, 1965. Assemblage, 253 x 670 x 190 cm. © Nancy Reddin Kienholz/ Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Smells can also be used by artists to break taboos and thus perform a more activist function.¹⁴ Female menstruation, for example, has long remained an undiscussed subject due to gender-related inequalities. In 1972, with her installation Menstruation Bathroom (1972), Judy Chicago managed to prime the discussion of this topic. Chicago created a white, otherwise sterile bathroom except for a trash can overflowing with bloody tampons and pads. Blood-soaked menstrual pads hung drying on a clothesline to the right of the toilet, while on the left, a shelf was packed with the entire arsenal of sanitary products for menstruation. Audiences weren’t able to enter the bathroom, but they could peek inside from behind a thin gauze veil. It seems that through this, spectators could clearly smell the pungent odor of menstrual blood, which most likely evoked both personal and cultural associations. In doing so, the smell may have reinforced a confrontation with the social stigma attached to menstruation. “However we feel about our own menstruation is how we feel about seeing its image in front of us”,¹⁵ Chicago commented. Furthermore, this installation bears similarities with The Beanery and the Gesamtkunstwerk of Duchamp in that it involves an evoked location that, thanks to the odor, feels profoundly real or authentic and establishes phenomenological proximity, as if the bathroom had just been vacated by a human entity.

Other artists who incorporated an olfactory dimension into their art include Fluxus artist Takako Saito with Spice Chess (1977): a chessboard where the pieces are differentiated solely on the basis of their distinctive scent, or Bill Viola with the video installation The Vapor (1975), in which artist and spectator become part of the same ritualistic space through the scent of fresh eucalyptus. Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles’ installation Volatile (1980) arouses feelings of fear by combining the smell of gas and a burning candle, and conceptual superstar Joseph Beuys incorporated the singular smell of olive oil in Olivestone (1984). Jan Fabre created an olfactory dimension in the installation Spring is Coming (1979), consisting of potatoes and onions wrapped in condoms that hung from the ceiling to rot, while Damien Hirst dominated the 1990s with his animal carcasses and dead creatures in glass tanks. Dutch artist Job Koelewijn also utilized scent in his work Dreaming (1996) in which four live performers wrote poems on the museum floor with a deodorant roller. Over time, these words disappeared, leaving the aromas of deodorant as the sole residue of the performative action.¹⁶

The aforementioned artists have never identified themselves as olfactory artists, but influenced the contemporary art world to such an extent that recently, artists appeared who refer to themselves as scent artists or olfactory artists, such as Peter de Cupere, Clara Ursitti, Christophe Laudamiel and Wolfgang Georgsdorf.¹⁷ A pioneer in this field is Berlin-based Norwegian artist and scent researcher Sissel Tolaas. She is known for capturing specific emotions, situations or even cities in scents, such as in the installation The Fear of Smell and the Smell of Fear (2006), for which she collected and synthetically mimicked the sweat of twenty men who suffer from various phobias.¹⁸ Audiences are thus invited to reflect socially on norms surrounding gender, vulnerability and emotions through an associative, sensory experience (fig. 3, 4).

Fig. 3. Sissel Tolaas, ‘Smell Berlin’, 2020. Installation for Berlin Global at Humboldt Forum, Berlin. Photo: Jonas van Kappel

Fig. 4. Sissel Tolaas, ‘Smell Berlin’, 2020. Installation for Berlin Global at Humboldt Forum, Berlin. Photo: Jonas van Kappel

1.2. Alexis Blake, Sissel Tolaas and ‘The Smell of Decay’ in the Prix de Rome 2021

In an effort to grasp the functioning and impact of olfactory artworks in museums, I conducted a study of visitors’ art experiences with a scent work, developed by multidisciplinary artist Alexis Blake in collaboration with Sissel Tolaas, at the Stedelijk Museum. The smell was part of the performance rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash (2021), staged by Blake at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, for which she won the Prix de Rome 2021 (fig. 5, 6).

The performance consisted of four dancers, two singers, a sound artist and sound engineer, with whom Blake has explored concepts of (women’s) oppression, collective trauma and loss, culminating in a physical choreography and classical dramaturgy. Blake calls for places and opportunities to release deep emotion freely and without censorship, such as in the form of a lament, a historical means of protest that was not always universally accepted and thus became a starting point for her artistic research. As an art form, lamentation was outlawed by the ancient Greeks, which restrained and silenced women’s voices in particular, and made it harder to experience emotional catharsis. In her artistic practice, Blake attempts to reflect on these and other patriarchal power relations, and to induce similar feelings of protest in the audience, so that they “connect with a deeper layer within themselves” and the body can express itself freely.¹⁹

She designed an ‘empty room’ for the exhibition space, filled purely with ‘the smell of decay’. At Blake’s request, Tolaas developed this smell in her laboratory, where she has an archive of 10,000 scent molecules. Located in the first room of the exhibition, the work overwhelms the museum visitor as soon as they walk through the narrow passageway, a kind of sluice, into the space. Immediately one notices that the light here is dimmer than in the rest of the museum and that the air is filled with a penetrating odor. Those who have not read the text that accompanies the work will probably first look for a visual work of art, but this is absent in this space. The visitor relies solely on one’s own body, sensations, emotions and thoughts. However, at the end of the room, a few meters away, is a publication in the with background information on Blake’s research: the only material point of reference in this exhibition space (fig. 7, 8).

Fig. 5. Alexis Blake, ‘rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash’, 2021. Performance, exhibition space with architectural interventions, dim lighting, fragrance, tabloid publication. Prix de Rome 2021. Photo: Daniel Nicolas.

Fig. 6. Alexis Blake, ‘rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash’, 2021. Performance. Prix de Rome 2021. Photo: Jonas van Kappel

Fig. 7. Alexis Blake, ‘rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash’, 2021. Performance, exhibition space with architectural interventions, dim lighting, fragrance, tabloid publication. Prix de Rome 2021. Photo: Bas Czerwinski.

Fig. 8. Alexis Blake, ‘rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash’, 2021. Performance, exhibition space with architectural interventions, dim lighting, fragrance, tabloid publication. Prix de Rome 2021. Photo: Bas Czerwinski.

1.3. Olfactory Art Experiences of Visitors to the Prix de Rome 2021

1.3.1. Method and Expectations

At the end of their exhibition visit, approximately thirty random visitors to the Stedelijk Museum were each asked a series of closed and open-ended questions related to their individual experience of the olfactory artwork. I then interpreted the responses in a discourse-analytical way, which reveals how visitors speak and think about the use of smell in an aesthetic context. Do they adopt an ocular-centric (visually oriented) or multisensory perspective when approaching olfactory artworks? As a research method, discourse analysis originates from the French philosopher Michel Foucault who, in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), argued that the relationship between knowledge and power reveals itself in the form of discourse, in which a certain way of speaking within a discipline, for example within the museum world, can produce a concept of knowledge and, consequently, a relation of power: it establishes one view of truth and excludes alternative ideas or perspectives. Thus, I looked for so-called discursive formations: linguistic constellations that systematically construct the subjects to which they relate, forming norm-affirming and -deviating perspectives.²⁰ The visitor responses may thus offer clues to different strategies of meaning-making that visitors employ to place olfactory art in an aesthetic framework.

Based on the notion that visitors have difficulty describing olfactory experiences due to an ocular-centric worldview and the intermingling quality of odors, it was expected that talking about smell would be difficult and lead to general descriptions.²¹ In addition, several studies²² have shown that odors are capable of arousing powerful emotions, associations and early memories. The questions included a reflection on the role of the visitor’s body in the multisensory interplay between odor, imagination and space. It was expected that a large proportion of the museum audience would not be open to a multisensory, performative perspective on art, because visual art is dominant in the museum world.

Visitors were asked the following five questions:

How would you describe this artwork?
How would you describe the smell?
Do you find the smell pleasant or unpleasant? Do you find the smell aesthetically pleasing or not?
Does the smell evoke associations and/or feelings and/or memories? If so, which ones?
Do you feel that the odor affects your experience of the space? If yes, in what way?

1.3.2. Discourse-analytical Interpretation

The olfactory discourse that visitors engage in regarding the work of Blake is best understood once the responses are divided into several clusters of meaning (see Table 1). These groupings of responses show the ways in which the museum audience experienced the artwork, both in terms of the work as an overall experience and the specifically perceived smell. From this it can also be implicitly inferred which aesthetic model the visitor used to approach the artwork with, for example by means of a visual or multisensory perspective, or an object- or subject-oriented approach.

As can be seen from Table 1, about half of the visitors use a multi-sensory or subject-oriented perspective to approach olfactory art, interpreting the work from a subjective experience rather than the ‘static’ art object. This result is consistent with the methodology shift in the art world that Von Hantelmann observed²³, and with a performative model of meaning-making. Semantically, the reactions of these visitors are strongly content-based, attempting to explain the artwork from its olfactory form or to assign meaning to it. Thus, the expectation that a large proportion of museum visitors are not yet open to a multisensory, performative perspective on art must be adjusted: about 50% are open to it. Other visitors, forming another small cluster of responses, rely on art historical terminology, using labels such as ‘modern’ or ‘minimalist’.

And then finally there are three clusters, that together more or less represent the other 50% of visitors, who rely on the visual model of art perception: visitors who have either not interpreted the work as art, cannot describe the artwork, or use ocular-centric terms. Notably, these people in particular have significantly more difficulty expressing both the artwork and the smell in words. Their responses are shorter and semantically less meaningful, as evidenced by responses such as ‘an empty room’, ‘[I] didn’t pay attention’, or ‘you don’t see anything’. This group of museum visitors is thus unaccustomed to recognizing olfactory art, especially when there is little information available to offer direction. They still rely on an ocular-centric perspective which has no relevance here. Visitors following this approach feel lost without visual or textual clues and thus cannot get a grasp of the work. This makes olfactory art vulnerable when it comes to the reception of a work. For instance, various visitors were unaware that they were dealing with a work of art because of the tabloids that were piled against the wall, leading to one visitor asking: ‘The stack of newspapers seems very significant. Did the museum put them there?’ Based on this pile of newspapers, visitors assumed the room was simply a passage or entrance to the beginning of the Prix de Rome 2021.

Table 1. Discourse-analytical grouping of visitor responses to the question of how one would describe the artwork or genre.

*Clusters of visitor responses*	How would you describe this artwork or genre?
*Cluster 1: Unable/difficult to describe*	Difficult [to describe]/no description
*Cluster 2: Not interpreted or recognized as art*	Not perceived as a work of art; as an introduction/entrance to the next room; thought it came from the textile work in the next room; [I] did not pay attention to it; became aware of it as through the interviewer; unexpected (not perceived as an installation)
*Cluster 3: Art historical terminology*	Alternative; modern; minimalist; virtual reality; original
*Cluster 4: Object-oriented/ocular-centric approach*	Formless; an empty room; an empty space/tunnel; a void; ‘is this the right way?’; empty
*Cluster 5: Multisensory approach*	Sensory; sensational; an experience of smell; non-visual; tantalizing; [it] appeals to other senses
*Cluster 6: Subject-oriented and performative approach*	Dramatic/uncomfortable; thoughtful and [it] makes you guess; as if I were somewhere else (in a zoo); it ‘does’ something to you; a participatory work (something that makes you part of it); confusing; unusual; uncomfortable; [it] immediately hits you deeply –> alienating

It is worth noting that none of the interviewees referred to the dimmed light in the exhibition space, given that it contrasts sharply with the other display areas. There is also a subtle architectural intervention in the room: the visitor enters the space through a kind of narrow passageway that curves at the end. Combined with the smell and light, this curatorial choice may lead the visitor to experience the space as an undefined, evoked location outside the white cube. Here, light, scent and spatiality constitute the space and in this way, they could create an aesthetic effect of phenomenological proximity that places the visitor, as it were, in a liminal space where the imagination can be given free rein. The assumption of this effect is confirmed by almost all museum visitors who recognized the work as an artwork. They conclude that the aspects of smell combined with the spatial experience of the installation generate associations that allow for both subjective appreciation and immediate action. In this context, it is clear from the visitors’ responses that scent affects their perception of the space. For example, when asked about that influence, visitor 31 states, ‘Yes, it gives you an idea of something. You want to stay there’. Moreover, in contrast to visitor 30, this visitor experienced positive associations and memories with the smell: ‘Yes, it makes you want to leave [the room] because of the memory it triggers. It hits you’. And visitor 10 states, ‘Yes, there is ‘something’ here, [the smell] gives an extra dimension [to the space]’.

Table 2. Statistical count of the number of visitors who believe that the odor affects the experience of the space.

*Visitor responses*	Do you feel that the odor affects your perception of the space?
Yes	23
No, but…	1 (no, but the visitor experienced a contrast between the odor and the space)
No	4

Visitors become confused by the emptiness in the room and so start looking for the cause or source of the smell. Some link the smell directly to the room or make the room secondary to the odor, but what is particularly striking: the smell intensifies and changes almost everyone’s perception or appreciation of the space. Almost all visitors who perceive the scent as ‘nice’ or positive, stay in the space relatively longer and also experience more positive memories and connotations associated with the scent than visitors who value the scent negatively. Thus, an olfactory work can play a major role in the appreciation of a museum space, and that appreciation depends on the personal associations and recollections that are invoked.

Moreover, the degree of appreciation, both positive and negative, varies considerably. This makes the olfactory work a highly subjective, as well as a performative experience, because the work does not ‘convey’ meaning, but ‘does’ something to the visitor and prompts the visitor to take physical action. In this context, it is striking that a number of the museum’s security guards unanimously expressed negative opinions about the olfactory work because the smell had a significant impact on their work. Visitor 7 (a security guard) labels the smell as ‘terrible’ and compares it to the smell of a dead body in a ditch. Visitor 12 (another security guard) states that she was sick for a few days due to the smell and the revulsion she felt, because of which she was temporarily unable to carry out her job at the Stedelijk Museum. The influence of this olfactory artwork thus extends far beyond conventional aesthetic frameworks and, as time passes, has an increasingly intrusive effect on the body. Moreover, this influence is an additional indicator of a shifting view on contemporary art, as the olfactory work blurs the boundaries between art and the mundane. The security guards experienced the smell as an authentic subject-related experience rather than as a representation or external object.

The subjectivity of the art experience is underlined by another correlation, namely the connection between associations and memories. Associations often seem to be based, unconsciously or otherwise, on a specific memory with an emotional charge. Visitor 28, for instance, describes the odor as follows: ‘Musty, like it’s in the attic at your grandparents’ house or in your parents’ garage.’ For her, the odor evoked a sense of security that made her feel comfortable in the space. It wasn’t until she was asked if the scent had also evoked memories that she realized that her previous associations actually stemmed from early recollections of her grandfather’s old house where she played with Playmobil figures. Visitor 22 had the same realization, as his association with a Japanese bathhouse later turned out to stem from a very detailed memory he shared with me: the first time he had been naked in front of friends, which had occurred in a Japanese bathhouse. In addition to these highly specific memories, the associations are also very diverse in nature and extremely detailed, ranging from semantic notions such as ‘musty’, ‘[like] cheese’ and ‘dirty’, to ‘Japanese bathhouses’, ‘domesticity’, an ‘overdose of Tippex’, ‘a cloud of femininity’, ‘grandma’, or ‘a South American herb garden’. It is notable that here, most of the associations actually contain notions of ‘smells of decay’, in line with the title of the artwork. In short, the power of an olfactory art experience seems to lean heavily on the degree to which the personal imagination and autobiographical memory are engaged and appears to elicit very divergent connotations and emotional responses.

Table 3. Statistical count of the number of visitors in whom associations, emotions or memories were evoked during their experience of the odor.

*Visitor responses*	Does the scent evoke associations / emotions / memories?
Associations	26 of the 28: 93%
Emotions/feelings	21 of the 28: 75%
Memories	16 of the 28: 57%

Returning to the question of the extent to which people are able to capture an olfactory experience in words, the answer is more complex than anticipated. Visitors to the Stedelijk Museum seem capable of incorporating their own associations into the olfactory description and of reflecting on how best to typify the scent, but are unable to select a unified semantic register in their choice of words. Nonetheless, trends can be discerned. For instance, ‘spicy’ is commonly used, as is ‘musty’. Sometimes, there is a transfer from the taste register to the domain of smell. Several visitors also characterize the odor as ‘strong’ or ‘intense’. Similar to the question of art genre, I designed six clusters of meaning that demonstrate that olfactory analysis differs substantially from visual analysis. As expected, descriptions of scents, in contrast to visual analyses, stem more often from subjective associations, performative effects, and a particular personal experience with the odor, as evidenced by the clusters ‘subject-centric evaluation’, ‘affecting the subject’, and ‘associative’. Table 4 lists all the clusters of meaning.

Table 4. Discourse-analytical grouping of visitor responses to the question of how one would describe the smell.

*Clusters of visitor responses*	How would you describe the odor?
Cluster 1: Difficult to describe	Can’t; can’t put my finger on it; familiar, made little impression
Cluster 2: Affecting the subject	Pungent; intrusive; strong; invasive; intense; confrontational; penetrating; intensive; sharp
Cluster 3: *Subject-centric evaluation*	Terrible; disgusting (didn’t work for several days because of the smell); neither nice nor dirty; unpleasant; strange; musty (4 x); not nice; dislike
Cluster 4: As if it came from an external source, another artwork or a person	Associated it with the textile work in the following exhibition room; functioning as an introduction to the next room; linked to the scent or perfume of the previous person
Cluster 5: *Exoticizing*	Spicy (3 x); like a South American herb garden; like an exotic place; as tiger balm with a newspaper
Cluster 6: *Associative/other*	Moldy; old; like a vintage store; like manure; earthy; like cheese; like a petting zoo; like the smell of sweat; like the smell in your grandparents’ attic or in your parents’ garage; sweet; perfumy; horsey; floral; like flowers left in a vase too long; industrial; like mothballs; like a man who has been spraying deodorant for 24 hours; like ink; chemical; like Abercrombie & Fitch; like a medicine such as cough syrup; like something from the dentist

A substantial majority of museum visitors to the Prix de Rome 2021 find the smell unpleasant, as shown in Table 5. Eight visitors remain neutral towards it. This proportion of neutral visitors has perhaps already developed a more complex relationship regarding odors and is stepping away from the conventional, binary thinking (like or dislike) when it comes to odor interpretation. Interviewees were somewhat divided on the aesthetic appreciation of Blake’s olfactory artwork (eleven versus eleven). Six found this difficult to determine. This leads me to conclude that an olfactory aesthetic is still in its infancy among most museum visitors, as a relatively large number of visitors do not recognize the work as an artistic expression.

Table 5. Statistical count of the number of visitors who perceived the odor as pleasant or unpleasant in addition to the number of visitors who perceived the odor as aesthetic.

Visitor responses

1. Do you find the smell pleasant or unpleasant?

2. Do you find the odor aesthetically pleasing or not?

Pleasant / neutral / unpleasant

7 / 8 / 14

Aesthetically pleasing / questionable, awkward or neutral / not aesthetically pleasing

11 / 6 / 11

Lastly, it appears that visitors’ perceptions and understanding were heavily impacted by curatorial strategies. The olfactory work, for instance, significantly interferes with the perception of other works: at least three visitors were under the impression that the scent originated from the textile work on display in the next room. Olfactory art, then, is difficult to capture or contain in an exhibition space and thus has the power to disperse throughout the rest of the building, allowing a work to leave a dominant impression on the museum experience. Where are the boundaries of the medium? On a curatorial level, it is therefore important to consider how an olfactory work expands in and through the space. Curators also need to make choices regarding the intensity of an olfactory work: if the scent is too subtle, visitors will pay no attention to it, but if the scent is too overpowering, there is a chance of alienation or unforeseen physical reactions, such as over-stimulation, that can have profound consequences for the art spectator, even beyond the museum space. All in all, olfactory artworks in museums offer many unexplored possibilities and untapped potential: olfactory art can connect us, to the space around us and to ourselves, but the use of smell requires a particular understanding of olfactory perception that should not be underestimated by either artist or curator. Olfactory art analyses can best be based on the fact that the meaning of a work of art is not embedded in the art object, but can arise in a performative way from physical subjects.

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About the Author

Jonas van Kappel is an art historian, curator and literary scholar from the Netherlands, based between Amsterdam and Stockholm, Sweden. During his MA in Curating Art at Stockholm University, he has been collaborating with various art institutions such as Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Kiruna Kommun, Konstfrämjandet, Nobel Week Lights and Accelerator. His interests and experiences lie in multi-sensory, queer- and audience-related approaches to contemporary art, research, and theatre education. Throughout his work and practice, he tries to keep on searching for that twilight zone where imagination, philosophy and societal questions meet.

1 With thanks to my thesis supervisor at University of Amsterdam: Dr. A.M. (Anja) Novak.

2 Shiner, L. Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts. Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 1-10.

3 Idem, p. 187.

4 Osman, A. “Historical Overview of Olfactory Art in the 20th Century”. Postgraduate Programme in Curating (CAS) ZHdK, 2013.

5 Lehman, M. “The 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme and Acte Manqué: The Terror of Memory and the Terror to Come”. Lingua Romana 13:1 (2018), p. 101; Verbeek, C. “SURREAL AROMA’S: (Re)constructing the volatile heritage of Marcel Duchamp”. RELIEF 10:1 (2016), p. 134-136.

6 Stevenson, R. “The Forgotten Sense: Using Olfaction in a Museum Context: A Neuroscience Perspective”, in: The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory and Space, compiled by N. Levent & A. Pascual-Leone. Rowman & Littlefield: United Kingdom, 2014, p. 161.

7 Von Hantelmann, D. “2. The Experiential Turn”, in: On Performativity, Walker Living Collections Catalogue, 2018.

8 Cirrincione, A. et al. “The Effect of Ambient Scent on the Experience of Art: Not as Good as It Smells”. Psychology & Marketing 31:8 (2014), p. 615-627.

9 Spence, C. “Scenting the Anosmic Cube: On the Use of Ambient Scent in the Context of the Art Gallery or Museum”. i-Perception 11:6 (2020), p. 26.

10 Keller, A. “The Scented Museum”, in: The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory and Space, compiled by N. Levent & A. Pascual-Leone. Rowman & Littlefield: United Kingdom, 2014, p. 173.

11 Hsu, H. “Olfactory Art, Transcorporeality, and the Museum Environment”. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 4:1 (2016), p. 8; Osman (2013), p. 6-11; Shiner (2020), p. 189.

12 Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. “De Pindakaasvloer van Wim T. Schippers”..

13 Reijnders, T. “Snuffelen aan olfactieve kunst: Geurkunst in geuren en kleuren”. Tijdschrift kM (2008), p. 2; Bolin, E. & D. Blandy. “Beyond Visual Culture: Seven Statements of Support for Material Culture Studies in Art Education”, in: Studies in Art Education 44:3 (2003), p. 157.

14 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. “Ingrijpende Restauratie voor The Beanery”, 21 June, 2012. .

15 The word ‘smell’ refers to a general application of smells while the word ‘scent’ or ‘odor’ are used when referring to a specific kind of smell.

16 Osman (2013), p. 11.

17 Verbeek, C. & C. Van Kampen. “Inhaling Memories: Smell and Taste Memories in Art, Science and Practice”, in: Senses and Society 8:2 (2013), p. 142.

18 Shiner (2020), p. 190.

19 Idem, p. 13-14; Kjellmer, V. “Scented Scenographics and Olfactory Art: Making Sense of Scent in the Museum”, in: Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 90:2 (2021), p. 80-81.

20 “Mondriaan Fonds. (2021, December 13). Alexis Blake over de Prix de Rome 2021 [Video]. YouTube..

21 Foucault, p. 34-43

22 Drobnick, J. “The Museum as Smellscape”, in: The Multisensory Museum: Cross- Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory and Space, compiled by N. Levent & A. Pascual-Leone. Rowman & Littlefield: United Kingdom, 2014, p. 187; Keller (2014), p. 172; Reijnders (2008);Shiner (2020), p. 139.

Stevenson (2014), p. 157; Verbeek & Van Kampen (2013), p. 145; Vega-Gomez, F. “The Scent of Art. Perception, Evaluation, and Behaviour in a Museum in Response to Olfactory Marketing”. Sustainability 12 (2020), p. 2.

23 Von Hantelmann (2018).