Guerlain’s Art Basel Paris Show Marries Scent With a Touch of Erotica

Alongside Santa Maria Novella (1221), Creed (1760), and Houbigant (1775), the house of Guerlain is one of oldest fragrance and beauty brands still existing in the world, dating back to 1828. The most iconic Guerlain scent may be Shalimar, the perfume Jacques Guerlain created in 1925 inspired by the enduring love story of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. The scent Guerlain made—a heady mix of bergamot, iris, and warm, enveloping vanilla—was revolutionary for the time. It launched an entire category (then named “oriental”) and arguably was the first gourmand scent. Andy Warhol wore it, Frida Kahlo loved it, and Bianca Jagger famously made it her own.

This year, Shalimar turns 100, and in honor of its continued relevance and evolving history, the house partnered with curators Hervé Mikaeloff and Benoit Baume to ruminate on love over the last hundred years. “En Plein Coeur: A Century of Pure Love” opened this week as a part of Art Basel Paris. “We have the feeling that love changed a lot during this century—our conceptions of love, our reactions, the definition of love, and what love means for people,” explains co-curator Baume.

The exhibition includes works by 43 emerging and legendary artists including Ren Hang, John Giorno, Alex Gardner, Camille Henrot, Marina Abramovic, Francois Rouan, Robert Mapplethorpe, and others. Several artists made new works for the exhibition, such as the young French multimedia artist Valentin Ranger, who crafted soft life-size sculptures to represent two of the 300 characters he will later bring to life in a digital queer love story. There’s also Francoise Petrovitch, who painted two teenage lovers to represent our feelings toward early romance. Guerlain perfumer Delphine Jelk made several scents to accompany these pieces, a unique touch that allows viewers to place the ideas explored in conversation with Guerlain’s sultry, feminine approach to scent.

The fragrances add a distinct storytelling element to the art, suggests Baume. “For example, if you see the picture of RongRong&inri [a photograph of two lovers’ hair tied together to form a heart], you won’t know just from looking, but the beginning their relationship was about exchanging photography for two to three years. After, they met and became a couple.”

Jelk made a fragrance that smells like a photographic dark room to sit alongside the image. “This perfume would never be in a shop,” Baume says. “It’s part of the exhibition, only existing for this piece.”

The works, shown over three floors in the Guerlain house on the Champs Élysées, consider representations of romantic love, heartbreak, the way intimacy is perceived from the outside, sexual desire, and how our relationship with technology has impacted romantic intimacy. “Obviously, we have some pieces inside the exhibition which are a little bit more explicit,” says Baume. “It’s really a debate about what is some pornography and what is art. Every piece that we show is shown with some poetry, and this is what makes the difference.”

For Jelk, the exhibition felt like a natural progression of her work as a nose for the house. “Synesthesia inspires me a lot in my work, and I’m very visual as we all are,” she says. “Even if I don’t work with an artist, I need this visual part. Expressing these works is instinctively inspiring.”

The exhibition will run through November 16th at 68 avenue des Champs-Élysées. You can also pick up Jelk’s latest creation, Shalimar L’Essence, should you wish to smell like one very renowned nose’s take on love. She describes the perfume as an homage to the original, updated with a few small but crucial changes (the addition of Madagascan vanilla tincture being one).