Visitors to the first retrospective devoted to the works of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, which opened at the Grand Palais in Paris on September 23, are in for an olfactory surprise.
A grand entrance, comprising a 49-ft high mirror that seems to dispense a rose-scented fragrance, arrests you both by sight and smell. As you walk toward the mirror, you see reflections of the sky and yourself. As you walk through the door on the Champs-Elysées side of the building, which is framed by two marble-like columns, you feel like you might be walking through the Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles, where Queen Marie-Antoinette lived.
All the visceral elements connect in the ether. Vigée Le Brun was the official portraitist of the Queen, who loved all things floral and rosy. Also, “roses were the favorite floral pattern of the end of 18th century. It is a symbol of femininity and celebrated through poetry, music, paintings and sculpture,” said Parisian perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, who created the installation in collaboration with French scenographer Séverine Baehrel.
Titled Voir et être vu (See and being seen), it was constructed with metallic roses running down the mirror, like a vine, that act as high-tech outdoor scent diffusers spreading a rose-scented fragrance that riffs on A la Rose, the fragrance that Kurkdjian created and released in 2014.
Kurkdjian told Blouin Lifestyle he was inspired by two paintings, both also named A la rose, by Vigée Le Brun. He adds: "Queen Marie Antoinette was in love with floral patterns. She is almost an icon of pre-romanticism with her love of nature and natural things. Don’t forget she is known for building a little farm outside of the official castle of Versailles. Also, she has been painted many times surrounded by roses... [while] her perfumes were blended with roses as she liked them so much."
Kurkdjian has a nose for large-scale scent-based installations. He has created the “scent of money” for French conceptual artist Sophie Calle; orange blossom-scented fountains for the gardens of the Palais de Versaille; and blood-scented wax for Syrian artist Hatch Arbach, to name a few.
The installation and exhibition will run at the Grand Palais until January 11, 2016.
