Smell and Taste in Art: Suggestions towards a Systematic Approach

The reflections outlined in this paper on smell and taste in modern and contemporary art are divided into three larger chapters: an introductory literature review is followed by a general discussion of sense perception in terms of philosophy, physiology, and intellectual history; and this forms the backdrop for the main body, in which eight different approaches to olfactory and gustatory art are proposed. These categories take different levels as their starting point: for instance, they illuminate the significance of smell and taste as materialities, they address aspects of the process of perception, they posit questions concerning the affect of smell and taste, they consider spatial and temporal aspects, and they discuss the relation between perception and knowledge. The main body of the paper is concerned with these categories and their respective theoretical background, also providing concrete examples of relevant works of art.