Le flair en images, ou comment est donnée à voir la communication olfactive

How is the action of sniffing others, which has been depreciated by good manners and aesthetic standards, represented in pictures? In unveiling the theme of social sniffing, this essay aims to track variations around the odour of the body and olfactory communication in Western visual arts. This issue implies to examine the social roles of sui generis as well as artefactual human odours, and to assess figurative arts as a means to unveil historical trends in the forms and functions of the sense of smell in our culture. The corpus of figurative works consulted, far from exhaustive, stretches from medieval and classical allegories of smell to the visual language of perfume advertisements, thro…