Surreal aroma's. (Re)constructing the volatile heritage of Marcel Duchamp

No ‘visual’ artist addressed the sense of smell as often as Marcel Duchamp did. Whereas his solid objects can still be studied visually and textually, the scents he used have by now evaporated, and a vocabulary to describe them is lacking until today. What we have left are nose witness reports and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Caro Verbeek
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Radboud University Press in cooperation with Open Journals 2016-06-01
Series:Relief: Revue Électronique de Littérature Francaise
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revue-relief.org/article/view/9108
Description
Summary:No ‘visual’ artist addressed the sense of smell as often as Marcel Duchamp did. Whereas his solid objects can still be studied visually and textually, the scents he used have by now evaporated, and a vocabulary to describe them is lacking until today. What we have left are nose witness reports and the possibility to smell olfactory reconstructions. Rereading canonical text with a more sensory gaze and inhaling these historical fragrances, such as cedar, erotic perfumes and coffee,  will enable us to reconstruct the olfactory dimension of our highly ocularcentric history of art.
ISSN:1873-5045