Art Sex and Scent

INHALING PASSIONS: ART, SEX AND SCENT Jim Drobnick Department of Fine Arts, Concordia University Montreal H3G 1M8, Canada

In the last decade or so, a number of artists have strategically integrated olfactory elements into their artwork to address the emotional, physiological and cultural complexities of eroticism. By reassessing and converting the supposed abnormality of scents into something ubiquitous, offering critiques of and alternatives to the cultural mandate of the deodorized body, and expanding the range and depth of the olfactory imaginaire, these artists have posited a dynamic, pivotal relationship between scent and sexuality.

Introduction

The erotic has long been associated with both the sense of smell and with art, although only recently have the three realms merged to any significant degree. In the 1990s a number of artists from quite divergent perspectives, strategically integrated olfactory elements into their artwork to address the emotional, physiological and cultural complexities of eroticism. This overlapping of scent, art and the erotic is only part of a growing interest in smell by visual artists since the 1960s in what could be argued to be the emergence of an "olfactophiliac" trend in contemporary art (see Drobnick, 1998). Visual art engaging with erotic images is, by definition, bound by discussions of ocular phenomena such as representation (e.g., pornography and censorship) and spectatorship (e.g., voyeurism and exhibitionism) (Gibson & Gibson, 1993; Home & Lewis, 1996). Bringing smell into this domain, however, changes the discussion considerably. Scents are, literally, "obscene"; that is, they are "out 37

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of view" and escape the confines of the frame. Smells are thus intriguing for artists to utilize because they defy and transcend traditional (visual) vocabularies regarding sexuality, yet they present powerful, emotionally resonant experiences. Invoking the sense of smell also directly implicates the body, especially the viewer's intimate, corporeal state of being. It is precisely because spectators are unable to remain distant and autonomous that artworks incorporating odors elicit immediate, visceral reactions. And while visual imagery, especially when erotically oriented, is believed to affect the emotional states of viewers, smell in the popular imagination (not to mention the growing scientific literature) has the reputation of being an even more influencing sense. The continual fascination with the irresistible allure of perfume, the intoxication of aphrodisiacs and, recently, the subconscious enchantment of pheromones, attests to the vitality of the belief in the persuasive powers of smell-beliefs that contemporary artists are as eager to exploit as to interrogate. One-hundred years ago, individuals expressing more than a passing concem with the sense of smell would have been diagnosed as exhibiting "olfactophilia." For Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1965 [1886]), a pronounced interest in odors, especially in regards to any kind of sexual behavior, was a sign of dementia, disease and degenerescence. His encyclopedia of sexual pathologies lists numerous types of smell-intoxicated individuals driven to deviant and illegal behavior: hair, foot, and clothing fetishists, coprophiliacs, handkerchief thieves, urine sniffers (renifleurs), flatus aficionados (stercoraires), and other connoisseurs of the foul (coprolagniacs). In regards to the olfactory, as with other non-normative sexual practices, Michel Foucault's criticism of sexologists certainly applies: the elaborate typologies, with typically arcane latinate terminology, invented by researchers such as Krafft-Ebing to document and classify the "thousand aberrant sexualities," serve only to medicalize and pathologize them (Foucault, 1980, p. 44). Havelock Ellis (1942 [1905]) furthered the regulation of olfactory pleasure via scientia sexualis. Despite devoting nearly eighty pages to the role of smell in all aspects of human sexual behavior, he nevertheless concluded that olfaction only plays a role for ex-

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ceptional and abnormal persons--neurasthenics (i.e., poets and artists), sexual inverts (fetishists and the like), and people living in equatorial climates (signaling a not-so subtle primitivism). Should readers identify with one of the plethora of examples of fragrant infatuation described in his text, Ellis sought fit to reassure readers (presumably Euro-American and bourgeois) that "refined and educated" people did not fit the profile of the "olfactory type," even if they fell under the influence of odors from time to time (Ellis, 1942, p. 111). While Krafft-Ebing and Ellis stigmatized olfactophilia through appeals to sexual, class, and cultural deviancy, it was Sigmund Freud (1961) who raised the stakes to the ultimate level--the survival of the human species. Smell, he argued, was too powerful a sense, too closely linked to animality and sexuality, and thus had to be sublimated for civilizationto emerge and develop. The "organic repression" he speculated as the cause for the diminution of smell and the subsequent privileging of vision purports to establish a universal and biological rationale, yet it is one that bears no relation to fact and that, unsurprisingly, serves as a subterfuge for Freud's own particular, cultural biases (see Howes,

2000). As much as medical and psychoanalytic assessments stigmatized olfactory perception, traditional aesthetic theory has provided its share of distrust towards affective and fragrant experiences. A fear of overly powerful emotional attachment is at the heart of what constitutes the "proper" mode of aesthetic delectation: "disinterested/pleasure" Kenneth Clark's classic study, The Nude, for instance, appeals to this form of aesthetic perception, and, tellingly, also points out its instability, especially when confronted with erotic artworks that specifically seek to engage the viewer's emotions and passions. No nude, he writes, "should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow" (Clark, 1956, p. 29). Yet these "erotic feelings" constantly risk upsetting the calm, confident demeanor of the connoisseur. Clark advocates what can only be a subjective, arbitrary standard--to seduce but not arouse, to be sensual but not sexual--lest the exercise of control over one's passions be broken. Lynda Nead (1992) rightly articulates the flaws in this aesthetic

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position, and contemporary artists have sought to transgress these assumptions by addressing their works precisely to provoke spectators out of their harmony and contemplation. As Clark recognized that "the rhythm of our breathing and the beat of our hearts are part of the [aesthetic] experience" (1956, p. 54), artists have taken up his remark literally, using perfumes, synthetic odors and ambient smells to influence their audiences' breathing and heartbeats. In short, smell disturbs ideal, transcendent conceptions of the aesthetic with eruptions of the animal, the visceral, and the libidinal. Collapsing the distinction between aesthetics and sexuality, Georges Bataille challenged connoisseurs of art to equal the power of perversion: "I defy" he said, "any amateur of painting to love a picture as much as a fetishist loves a shoe" (Foster, 1996, p. 159). Many of the works discussed in this article, transgressing the inodorate ideals of Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, Freud and Clark, take up Bataille's dare and openly engage in such embracing of the olfactory. My survey of contemporary artworks that infuse the dynamics of scent into the arena of sexuality centers upon four themes: (1) practices of seduction (perfumes), (2) the corporeal politics of attraction and disgust (body odors), (3) issues inherent to fragrance technology and biological determinism (cyborg scents), and (4) idiosyncratic extensions of olfactory eroticism (aromance). In each section, I show how artists accentuate as well as challenge prevailing assumptions about smell and the erotic, and explore the influence of scent on personal, aesthetic and cultural levels. Perfumes: Essences of Seduction

The arsenal of seduction includes many potent weapons: an alluring look or pose, a devilish smile, a risqu6 touch, a velvety voice. Scent, however, often works on a more subtle level, one below conscious perception, hence its nickname, "the secret seducer" (Vroon, 1997). The belief in the power of perfume to break down a person's resistance, surrender rational control, and stimulate dormant desires is an ancient one, and it is difficult to know whether

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romance novels and perfume ads perpetuate the belief or merely reflect its popularity. Either way, regarding perfume as a means for magical enchantment (Gell, 1977), an intoxicating drug (Barill6 & Laroze, 1995), or a fragrant means by which to strategically "mark" a desirable individual (Blakely & Moore, 1998), renders it a paradigmatic technique of erotic persuasion. Artists working at the intersection of perfume and sex are just as likely to exaggerate its reputed powers as to critique its mythological status. Perfume, and its ability to unlock sexual drives, makes a pivotal appearance in Coco Fusco's satirical video, Pochonovela (1995), a sit-corn set in an East Los Angeles Chicano household. The family's domestic peace is unsettled when the yuppie-identified son initiates a cross-ethnic relationship-he brings home a "gringa." Pleading and argumentation fail, so the disapproving matriarch seeks to demonstrate the unsuitability of the WASP girlfriend and the insurmountability of cultural difference through olfactory means. Spraying the unsuspecting young woman with a magical perfume called "Frida,''1 the herbal fragrance produces a startling transformation. The formerly uptight, straitlaced valley girl, ignorant of everything Latin American, spontaneously dances the lambada and feels her libido suddenly released. The de-repression of desire and the flush of Latin sensuality, however, proves too much for her nervous system and she collapses--obviously lacking the cultural and corporeal training to handle such a surfeit of sexual energy. Perfume here plays a dual role: as an aromatic aphrodisiac, it is a sensory education in a bottle; as the essence of a cultural sensibility, it is a whiff of alterity that can transform the very foundation of one's psychic and physical identity. The olfactory artworks created by Sarah Schwartz, Perfume Veils (1995), presents its audience with scents that can be worn in layers depending upon one's mood and intention. Exploring the dualities, contradictions and unconscious urges involved in seduction, the three fragrances--"Pure/Deceit," "Lucid/Agony," "Beauty/Ravish" (utilizing, respectively, neroli, rose and ylang-ylang, with a base of vanilla, woods and spices in all three)--posit seduction as a maelstrom of mixed motives, paradoxical communications, mysterious tactics, and ambiguous feelings. The antithetical words composing

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each perfume's name are etched onto the front and back of the transparent bottles and allude to the divided interests of the self: where a yearning for intimacy may be obstructed by cautionary thoughts of self-protection, where chivalrous ideals of romantic union may be undercut by illicit or irrational behavior. While the artist seeks to "explore the self-articulating, self-actuating aspects of fragrance and desire, beauty and individuality" (Schwartz, 1995), this translates into a series of perfumes that will supposedly encourage one to follow one's drives and desires--without regret, regardless of the consequences. Within every desire, Perfume Veils seems to imply, there lies the near possibility of danger, fear, and pain. If this sounds too close to the Freudian linking of Eros and Thanatos in a self-annihilating spiral, Schwartz instead aromatically displays the contradictions of a "feminine feminist"----demandingthat women be able to break out of patriarchal stereotypes of submissiveness, yet still be able to enact whatever qualities their erotic imagination may insist: vulnerability or aggressiveness, wildness or elegance, sophistication or innocence. The marketing of seduction constitutes the theme for Maciej Toporowicz, who creates mock advertisements that undermine the premises of perfume's supposed allure. His parody of Calvin Klein's perfume ads replaces the campaign's images with their stylistic antecedents: statuary and architecture from the Third Reich (Figure 1). Questioning whether the recycling of fascist aesthetics can avoid the association with fascist ethics, Toporowicz foregrounds the complicity of the fashion industry in perpetrating an ideology of beauty that has, in the not too distant past, served as a rationale for eugenic practices. Obsession, Eternity and Escape become more than coy perfume names, they bear ominous resonances of a politics of beauty taken to lethal extremes. The link between the cult of the perfect body and devastating social effects also appears in his work on the objectification of women prostitutes in Bangkok. Exposing the reality behind fantasies of seduction and the "other," the faux-photo campaign for his perfume, Lure (1995), brings attention to the young women sold into the sex trade by impoverished parents and to whom little care is

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taken to educate about the dangers of STDs and AIDS. Accompanying the images of lingerie-clad women in hotel rooms is a bottle of fragrance emblazoned with a calligraphic version of the international sign for biohazardous materials. 2 The sign warns viewers about dangers on literal as well as metaphorical levels--there is the threat to both user and provider in an unregulated and exploitative sex trade, as well as the threat of advertising practices that perpetuate Orientalist myths and images. Figure 1 Maciej Toporowicz, from the Obsession series (1993), photograph, 16 x 20"; photo: courtesy the artist and Lombard/Fried.

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Body Odors: Subliminal Aphrodisiacs As much as the perfume industry seeks to monopolize the scents of attraction, and as much as deodorant manufacturers attempt to pathologize the body as the source of vile, anti-social exudations, body odors are an inevitable product of human physiology and are the basis of sexual attraction. Perfumers may fiercely guard the ingredients to their creations, but in actuality many are based on diluted or close simulations of sweaty, urinous or fecal odors (Engen 1991: 73). Every bodily excretion (with the exception of tears) has a characteristic fragrance and, much to the chagrin of odorphobic societies such as the West, the body is specifically designed to produce secretions that create each person's unique olfactory aura. Given the ubiquity and constancy of social conditioning to achieve the ideal of complete inodorateness, sex is one of those realms in which bodily smells are viewed anxiously and ambivalently.3More than simply a matter of soap and personal hygiene, reactions to body odors raise complex issues of how the body is culturally regulated, how some sensory modes (such as smell) are repressed under dubious rationales of propriety and decorum, and how odors may unleash subversive and transgressive notions of sexuality and pleasure. Reversing the abject status of the female body and reclaiming its processes and experiences has been a fundamental tenet of feminist and lesbian political and aesthetic practice. Carolee Schneemann's contribution to the book Fantastic Architecture outlines a polymorphous pleasure arcade called "The Genitals Play-Erotic Meat Room;' a heterotopic space at the center of her labyrinthine Body House. If built, it would be filled with oversized and interactive "pricks, balls, nipples, clitorises, labia majora, labia minora, cunts and ass holes" with "ecstatic electrical currents" and other "extreme sensations." Besides details such as color, texture and moisture, the aromas of these objects would be "lifelike" (Schneemann, 1969). The celebration of genital smells, from both men and women, and for both men and women, in any combination, affirm the emanations of the body in a Marcusian pandemonium of unalienated visceral pleasure. The "pro-sex" orientation of

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Schneemann espouses a liberation of the body from puritanical restraints, de-sensualized rationality and somatophobia. Contra Freud, the smells of the genitals do not bring about the fall of civilization and a descent into animality, but a playful exploration of the carnal potential of the body. Artist Jenny Holzer and fashion designer Helmut Lang infused their installation, I Smell You on My Clothes (1996), with the olfactory remnants of an erotic tryst--a specially manufactured perfume simulating the pungent smell of skin and sweat-soaked clothing. Visitors were ensconced in a dark chamber lit only by Holzer's scrolling electronic signboards, replete with phrases about the poignant and sometimes twisted emotions endemic to archetypal moments of a relationship: from flirting and sexual initiation, to despondency and loss, to reminiscence and longing. Their collaboration dispensed with "the look" that is primary to haute couture and instead relied upon text and the body's fragrant exudations to propel visitors into an erotic milieu, evoking private associations and personal memories of amorous encounters. Noritoshi Hirakawa likewise foregrounds an unexpectedly intimate encounter with body odors in Garden of Nirvana (1996). In this installation featuring worn underwear hanging from the ceiling like musky chandeliers, female visitors were invited to not only experience but to contribute their worn underwear. At once celebrating the effects of corporeality and catering to fetishists, the piece also draws upon Buddhist ascetic practices where one trains the mind by confronting socially taboo sensations (see Drobnick & Fisher, 1997). The funky odor difemina that circulates in the gallery air raises perplexing questions: Does the smell on display combat or substantiate gynophobia? Does it liberate individuals from oppressive dictates of hygiene or does it entrench them even more anxiously? Is women's vaginal odor reclaimed as an everyday, natural occurrence or does it represent a further degree of colonization by male desire? While the immediacy of the smell and the viscerality of the body are beyond doubt, Garden of Nirvana generates misogynist and emancipatory interpretations that uneasily coexist. While Hirakawa's installation exhibits aromatic traces of the body, Haruko Okano's sculptures are literally alive. Made from the skin-

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like kombucha fungus, which exudes a musky odor, and dripping essential oils, such as patchouli, her works draw visitors into a kind of physical intimacy that uncannily mimics the smell and feel of the human body. The bulbous, hairy, genitalia-shaped forms in V/sceral Baggage (1997) invite the curious to touch and fondle, but the oils sweating through the permeable membranes will cause a stale, animal-like odor to cling to the hands (Figure 2). The materiality of the body for Okano is not a site of repulsion, no matter how seemingly abject its state, but a repository of cultural memory and a trigger of spiritual insight. The intense olfactory experience of her sculptures places sex in the broader cycle of life and death, where the inevitability of putrefaction and decay is not feared but embraced as a vital aspect of existence. Figure 2 Haruko Okano, VisceralBagagge (1997), natural latex, gelatin, fiber, fish hooks, 7 x 37 x 3.5"; photo: courtesy the artist.

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Cyborg Scents: Towards a Nasal Logic

Long held to be the most animal of senses, smell in the postmodern era is increasingly being subject to technological enhancement, alteration, simulation and appropriation. Metaphors pertaining to scents have related it to clothing, masks or magic pot i o n s - b u t now one must add the trope of a technological prosthesis. Synthetically produced scents, artificial noses, digital communication of smells, security scanners that identify individuals by their unique "odor signature" are just a few indicators that the colonization of the biological is quickly advancing upon the terrain of the olfactory. Despite the organic association between sex and smells, interventions by aromatic technologies can significantly influence and direct sexual behavior. Like the apparently innocuous but subliminal melodies of Muzak, the ineffable atmospheres of scent may conceal manipulative interests and motives. Immersive and welcoming odors---especially in the rising application of environmental fragrancing in offices and shopping malls---can serve the instrumental uses of mood modification or engineering conformity. The works of Carsten Hrller, a trained phytopathologist whose dissertation examined the olfactory communication of insects, foreground the biological nature of human behavior. Infusing installations with pheromones and aphrodisiacs, Hrller mischievously asserts the physiological processes inherent to culturally hallowed activities such as the sentimental pursuit of love, as well as calls to task the exploitative desires of those who seek to capitalize upon these presumed weaknesses. The laboratory-like installation of Pealove Room (1994), for instance, includes synthesized body odors and aerosolized stimulants, along with sex harnesses, suggesting that the dynamics of love may be better explained by the determinism of Pavlov than the romantic ethos of Shakespeare. Jana Sterbak's "ultimate" keepsake, Perspiration (1995), a chemical reconstitution of her partner's glandular secretions, alludes to an obsessive quest to possess and preserve the "essence" of another. Writers such as Baudelaire have fantasized about distilling and bottling the alluring, ephemeral aroma of their lovers, but it is

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only with recent breakthroughs in biotechnology that an olfactory simulacrum could be attempted. Sterbak's fetishistic sculpture, an oblong glass container about the size of a baby, yearns to be cradled in one's arms as much as to be onanistically taken to bed. The liquid, however, despite its source, has none of the anticipated smell until mixed into the pores and bacteria of the skin. The degree of intimacy in this relationship is thus measured less by the proximity of one body next to another, but in sharing scent, intermixing molecules, wearing another's skin, changing one's body chemistry--it is a literal exercise in becoming-other. Clara Ursitti's work draws upon recent scientific evidence that smell is an influential, perhaps decisive, factor in choosing a partner (see, e.g., Hirsch, 1998). Her prototype for a scent-based dating service, Pheromone Link (1996), sports the motto "love is in Figure 3 Clara Ursitti, Pheromone Link~----The Pre-Launch (1996), view of interactive installation, t-shirts, scent signature collection pads, pheromone test, instructions, questionnaire, smell strips, photographs, fragrance systems, video; photo: courtesy the artist.

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the air" (Figure 3) and builds upon the numerous anecdotes of individuals, like Henry III, who reputedly fell in love at first whiff (Stoddart, 1992). Users are issued specially fitted T-shirts with absorbent pads velcroed into the armpits. They can then sniff through a collection of scent-strips from other members, systematized by preferences and aromatic qualities. Ursitti's mock-service may or may not catch on with lovelorn singles, but it foregrounds sweat as more than an olfactory nuisance and socialfauxpas. Sweat here is recognized as a physiological product that also sends messages-semiochemicals--about a person's emotional state and physical well-being that can be perceived and compared. 4 As much as an odor, like love, seems to attract or repulse in a manner beyond rational control, Pheromone Link harnesses smell as a nascent and intuitive technology of sexual discrimination.

Aromance: Atmospheres of Desire To create an erotic environment, most romance guides and sex manuals encourage the stimulation of all the sensory channels (see, e.g., Douglas & Slinger, 1979, p. 104; Nash, 1995). Pleasing scents are often suggested as an element of foreplay in the theater of sensual delight--they create an inviting ambiance that will arouse amorous thoughts and actions. In a subtle attempt to forestall potential puritanical inhibitions about the carnal use of fragrances to produce what Valerie Ann Worwood (1994) calls an "aromantic" atmosphere, many authors invoke the authority of the Old Testament and the Song of Solomon to give olfactory indulgence that unimpeachable Biblical seal of approval. As much as sweet, floral and musky smells are privileged for their influence on the passions, any scent, given the fight context, can be charged erotically. Barbara Smith, even while employing scents commonly associated with sensual encounters, challenges the self-negating, submissive role women are conditioned to play in a performance entitled Feed Me (1973), which featured the artist directing visitors to give her sustenance. "Food" could be interpreted on a number of levels: literally as something to eat or drink, or as conversation, massage and other forms of affection. The event took place in a specially

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constructed boudoir environment replete with all of the accouterments of ars erotica: candles, rugs, pillows, flowers, wine and music. Incense created a relaxed, intimate ambiance, and body oils and perfume were available as sensuous gifts (Smith, 1989, pp. 118120). As much as Smith problematically personified the captive odalisque, available to all, she also asserted the ownership of her body and desires, controlling the terms of the engagements. By refusing to allow visitors to maintain anonymity, neutrality or distance, she called into account theirs as well as her sexuality (Forte, 1990, p. 162). The presence of the olfactory, along with the senses of touch and taste, steered encounters toward the sensual and interactive, and prevented them from being purely scopic and objectifying. In Laurie Palmer's Hothouse (obsc.) (1992), a wood and glass enclosure is permeated with the aromas of sweat and gardenias. The title derives from archaic slang for "brothel" and recalls how houses of ill repute were characterized by olfactory excess as well as sexual indulgence (Corbin, 1990, p. 611). The heavy and exotic fragrances of flowers also made the garden and hothouse, in Victorian times, a popular setting for trysts and seductions (Waters, 1988, pp. 270-272). So powerful was the belief in the lustful influence of odors that nineteenth-century moral watchdogs warned against young women smelling too freely of floral essences lest they awaken their libidos and lose control of their virtue (Corbin, 1986, p. 184). While referencing these bygone details of Victoriana, Palmer's pungent chamber allows visitors to be observed reacting to a pair of conceptually opposed and culturally loaded odors. Hothouse sets up a competition between sweat and fragrance---challenging sniffers to differentiate, judge, experience disgust or pleasure, perhaps even get turned on--yet it also sets up an equivalence between animal secretion and floral bouquet, instantiating the olfactory oxymoron of "human perfume." Andrew Harwood's ironic advertising campaign for Janitor Cologne and Lady Janitor (1998) included custom-made scents, mopping performances and a bookwork of the artist's experiences in the sanitation profession. The punning slogan--"Why be on top when you can be on the bottom?"--referred as much to positions

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of class, wealth and status as to the dominant/submissive dyad. The mixed olfactory messages of Harwood's perfumed disinfectants fuses the industry standard of lemon and pine scents with erotically charged notes of lilac and musk. If there is confusion about whether the hybrid aromas are to be used on one's body or the office floor, to initiate a seduction or to kill germs, it is because they recall the times when perfumes served as combatants against disease, not to mention when cleaning solvents, such as Lysol, were marketed as feminine hygiene products (Park, 1996; McHugh, 1997). The confusion doesn't end at the boundary of the skin, however. With walls, floors, sinks, toilets and every other surface emanating the warm, pungent aromas of animal and floral sex, what is one to conclude but that the entire built environment is eroticized? Whether or not the sex is dirty or clean, top or bottom, Harwood's campaign animates every stall, cubicle and floorboard with carnal potential. Figure 4 Claude Wampler, Muffle (1997), performance still; photo: courtesy the artist and Postmasters Gallery.

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Lubrication takes on a double meaning in Claude Wampler's

Muffle (1997), a performance between her and a motorcycle in a New York City hotel room (Figure 4). Caught in bed by visitors, the lovers conduct a post-coital conversation of seductive whisperings and machine-baritone replies. The incongruous scents of RevTech Grade 70 Motorcycle Oil and Botanical Erotic Massage Oil can be sniffed as Wampler actualizes the motorcycle fetishism of Scorpio Rising, biker magazines and other techno-enthusiast pursuits--taking adoration to the ultimate act of erotic consummation. In between rumpled sheets, flesh and metal, secretions and grease mix in an absurdist but credible apparition of mechano-sex. Shifting from hugging the road to snuggling in bed, Wampler's fantasy annihilates the simplistic linkage of men and machines and opens up a realm for women in the appreciation and lust for pistons, gears, throttles and fuel injection. Muffle posits a complex sexuality existing at the interface of the human and the machine, where high performance involves more than octane levels and revolutions per minute. Conclusion

The artists analyzed in this article cunningly demonstrate the potential erotic significance of banal as well as extreme smells, sentimental as well as unusual odors, and organic as well as synthesized scents. Artworks occupying the nexus of scent and sexuality counter the cultural denial of scent, the obsessiveness of bourgeois standards of hygiene, and the estrangement from bodily processes brought about by denials of the corporeal. Rather than being "primitive" or vestigial, something that humans evolved away from once they assumed upright postures, artists working at the intersection of the erotic and olfactory address the sense of smell in all of its complexity as a signifier of personal, cultural and physiological processes. As much as odors seem to fall into a simple dichotomy of good/bad, fragrant/stench, bewitching/disgusting, artists draw out a fuller sense of their dimensionality and polysemic potential. These artworks dispel and counter some of the prevailing assumptions about smells--that bodily odors are necessarily an embarrassment, or that an interest in fragrant sensations is symptomatic

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of an aberrant personality--and integrate olfaction into every level of erotic experience. Not only can the totality of the body, in all of its secretions, regions and processes be eroticized, but so too can the entire environment, in fact, anywhere one can sniff that special something in the air. Smells destabilize ocularcentric arguments about representation that customarily frame discussions of art and sexuality. Not only does the presence of smell shift the nature of aesthetic perception from visual delectation to corporeal experience, it also transforms the role of the artist away from the stereotype of the autonomous creator. Wily seducer, possessive lover, entrepreneurial matchmaker, olfactory terrorist, eccentric sensualist, sensory critic, behavioral scientist--these are just a few of the identities symbolically occupied and explored when artists combine scent and eroticism. Collaborating with professional noses and smell researchers, incorporating cutting-edge aroma technology and chemical synthesis into their works, the practice of the artist expands into the domains of perfumery, aromatherapy, olfactory science, shamanism (i.e., perfumero), and even, as stated at the beginning of this article, the volatile terrain of olfactophilia. To foreground the sense of smell to any significant degree in erotic practice is to tempt the label of "perversion." Smell is commonly relegated to being either an aphrodisiacal prelude, important only as an aspect of seduction or foreplay (never an end in itself), or merely an ephemeral pleasure, a superfluous luxury that one can just as easily do without,s The seeming unorthodoxy of olfactophilia certainly qualifies it as an erotic behavior that Foucault would call a "peripheral sexuality" (1980, p. 48), or, likewise, for Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn, a "petty sexuality" (1995, pp. x-xi)--a form of libidinality outside the realm of heteronormative and procreative ideologies. By placing emphasis on the nose, aromatic locations across the body, and the fragrant aura (natural or artificially enhanced) that inevitably accompanies individuals, olfactophilia disturbs reductivist conceptions of sexuality based on phallocentric terms. 6 As well, the ethereal character of smell and its pleasures disrupt notions of a corporeality that is stable, unified, and discretely bounded. Vaporous exudations dissolve the integrity and material-

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ity of the body and reconfigure it as an affective, volatile presence that continues beyond the threshold of the skin. The radicality of olfactophilia thus resides in its problematizing of the genital economy of sexuality, and its pluralizing of eroticism to every inhalation and exhalation. Whether or not the artists discussed in this article are olfactophiliacs in any sense of the word is irrelevant, for we the audience are controversially positioned as such. By reassessing and converting its supposed abnormality into the everyday and ubiquitous, offering critiques of and alternatives to the cultural mandate of the deodorized body, and expanding the range and depth of the olfactory imaginaire, artists posit a dynamic, pivotal relationship between scent and sexuality. 7 If these artworks risk promoting olfactophilia, it is only due to the cultural underestimation of the significance of scent--and the recognition of its very normality-in erotic life. Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

The perfume's name refers to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, a surrealist painter admired for expressive canvases dealing with the bodily experience, women's identity and Latin American sensibility. The scent of Lure is a perfumer's recreation of what the artist felt to be the most distinctive olfactory experience in Thailand--the fragrance of a particular incense that, ironically, pervaded both temples and brothels. Such anxiety and ambivalence pertains to both philic and phobic reactions to smell. Sexual advice columns appearing in newspapers, weeklies and magazines, now often feature questions from individuals concerned about an exaggerated liking/disliking of odors--indicating a lessening in the reluctance to talk about smells. Ursitti's collaborator in analyzing and synthesizing scents is, fittingly, Dr. George Dodd, olfactory researcher and author of numerous scientific texts on smell, including the co-editing of Fragrance: The Psychology and Biology of Perfume, which has several articles on semiochemicals (Van Toiler & Dodd, 1992). Regarding the "inessentialness" of smell, a sociologist polled college students about which sense was the most dispensable: 57 percent chose smell (Synnott, 1993, p. 183). This is not to say, however, that there cannot also be retrograde utilizations of smell. Odor has been rhetorically employed to solidify gender difference and support misogynist and patriarchal attitudes (see Classen, 1998, pp. 63-85).

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Over the past thirty years, much research has been devoted to smell's significance to sexuality. For instance, smell is the only sensory mode to change at puberty and in regards to ovulation and hormonal cycles; sexual dysfunctions have been attributed to a reduced olfactory capability; neural links have been found between the nose, olfactory bulb and the genitals; and, of course, the existence of human pheromones has generated much debate (see, e.g., Hirsch, 1998; Stoddart, 1992).

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