Perfume (Parfum), ca. 1900. Published by Editions de la Trading Company. Color lithograph on card stock. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Leonard Lauder. 2012.6949.12

View complete object information here.

I still have Helena Rubinstein on my mind after viewing the Jewish Museum’s exhibition about her. It seems like a good time, then, to take a closer look at this advertisement for the fragrance Emotion, launched by Helena Rubinstein in 1960.

The ad, which dates to 1965, shows a stylish couple posed against a background of wavy black and white lines that resembles the patterning of a particularly mod zebra. The man is kissing the woman’s hand, or perhaps inhaling her perfume.

The backdrop is really the point, though—we can find an embracing couple in perfume ads from every decade of the past century, but that bold (even overpowering) design places this image squarely in the middle of the 1960s and nowhere else…

Whoever designed this advertisement for Helena Rubinstein was obviously aware of a recent movement in the visual arts: Op Art. Oxford Art Online defines Op Art, a nickname for “Optical Art,” as “painting and sculpture that exploits the illusions or optical effects of perceptual processes.”

In other words, Op Art’s patterns and colors are constructed to trick your eye and your mind into seeing vibrations, movement, and depth where they don’t really exist. The effect can be disorienting.

Bridget Riley was one of the central practitioners of Op Art in the 1960s and 1970s. Here we see her posed against one of her own paintings. She’s the essence of mod/bohemian cool, of course.

Op Art was a brief-lived style but one that had an immediate influence on fashion and popular culture. Riley has recalled a 1965 visit to New York in which she took a taxi up Madison Avenue and was aghast to see knock-offs of her Op Art compositions splashed across dress designs in every shop window. (See this article and this article for details.)

If she had flipped through a magazine that carried the ad for Helena Rubinstein’s Emotion, or stepped into a store that carried the perfume line, she might have had further cause for outrage. The print ad at top, for example, recalls Riley’s Intake (1964) or Arrest 1 and 2 (1965).

And what about this Emotion Eau de Parfum?

It’s hard to miss the packaging’s similarity to “Movement in Squares.”

As Riley ruefully said of her work’s instant fame and influence in America, ‘The whole thing had spread everywhere even before I touched down at the airport.” She reportedly tried to sue some of the businesses that had recycled her art. (I don’t know whether Rubinstein’s company was one of them.)

What comes around, goes around…and now you can purchase a makeup pouch printed with the 1965 Emotion ad in the Jewish Museum’s gift shop after you view the Helena Rubinstein exhibition.

The exhibition catalogue does mention contemporary art’s effect on Rubinstein’s advertising   in the 60s, but it makes no mention of Riley. I just wanted to correct that omission here.

Agent Provocateur has released a few good fragrances over the past decade or so, although its most recent release (Fatale) was very disappointing. I like the original Agent Provocateur scent, and Maitresse; I know that L’Agent also has some fans. I don’t think the collection is very heavily advertised in the United States, however, because I don’t remember seeing this advertisement when L’Agent was launched in 2011.

It’s a surprisingly stark and gloomy-looking ad for a women’s perfume. There’s a bit of cleavage, but nowhere near as much as we see in other perfume ads from L’Agent Provocateur (it’s a lingerie company, after all!)—and the chess board gives the image a cerebral twist…

Isn’t it hard to see a chessboard shot in black-and-white without thinking of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)? Especially a chessboard sitting on a rocky shore, with dark waters and a cloudy sky in the distance? (Look back up at the L’Agent ad!)

In the film, a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) plays a game of chess against Death (Bengt Ekerot). If the knight wins the game, he will survive; if he loses, Death will take his life.

It’s such an iconic scene that it’s been parodied by everyone from Woody Allen to “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.”

Questions remain: is the Agent Provocateur model meant to personify Death? or do we fill Death’s seat? No, most likely, the game is just being used as a metaphor for seduction.

When I see a chessboard in a perfume ad, I can’t help but think of the commercials for Calvin Klein Obsession that started airing in 1985. They were so fantastically arty and pretentious. Josie Borain played the tortured heroine of those print and television ads. (Oh, how I miss models like her.) In one commercial, she swept the pieces off a chessboard, exclaiming, “Save me!” In another, she stared at a man and a young boy playing chess in a black-and-white room.

“Between love and madness lies obsession.” A chess piece—the king—appeared in the final shot with Josie, the perfume, and a single orchid bloom. Life! Love! It’s all a game! (I think that was the message, but who knows.)

These ads were so well-known that they were parodied on “Saturday Night Live” in 1987. The immortal Jan Hooks (someone else I miss!) emoted her way through a pitch-perfect “ad” for “Calvin Kleen’s Compulsion,” again with a chess board and a white king prominently featured.

This isn’t a perfume ad, but I’ll free-associate here for a minute. Katy Perry posed for a glamorous black-and-white ad campaign shot by Ellen von Unwerth in 2012 (just one year after the L’Agent Provocateur ad). It’s a promotion for GHD hair-styling products, but the chess pieces look like perfume bottles to me.

I don’t think any existential meaning was intended.

And here’s the whole reason I started thinking about chess today: Ms. Perry’s much-discussed halftime “performance” for Superbowl XLIX, which included a segment with dancers dressed as shiny, robotic chess pieces. (The costumes were designed by Marina Toybina.)

Why? I do not know. It’s even harder to comprehend than a Bergman film, but for very different reasons.

Advertisement for Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommy Girl, 1990s.

Fame, the first fragrance to bear Lady Gaga’s name, will be released in September. First disclaimer: I haven’t tried it yet, so this isn’t a review. Instead, I’m taking a lighthearted look at the advertising image that was released in July. Second disclaimer: although I’m a general admirer of Lady Gaga’s music and self-presentation, I’m not an expert on her every word and deed. This is just my own, Rorschach–blot-like impression of the ad. And one quick warning: this post will include further nudity, albeit of an artistic nature. (NSFW!)

This ad for Fame (shot by Steven Klein) is refreshingly unlike any other perfume ad that we’ve seen lately: no embracing male-female couple, no evening gown, no grassy meadow, no fancy interiors, no flowers. Just the Lady herself, posed like an odalisque, nude except for clusters of tiny, thong-clad men and a black leather mask.

Given the subject of the fragrance, and many of her songs, I’m tempted to look at this set-up as a metaphor for “fame.” Do the climbing men symbolize the star’s fans (yes, the “little monsters”), latching onto her glamor and power? Or do they represent the many moving parts of the fame-machinery that has made her a household name?

And what about that mask? It could just be a bondage reference (again, not one of my particular areas of expertise). On the other hand, it does remind me of certain older photographs that I’ve seen.

A few years ago, a work project led me to read about E. J. Bellocq’s photographs of female prostitutes in New Orleans, shot in the red-light Storyville neighborhood at the close of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth century. Bellocq photographed the women in the rooms where they lived and worked, sometimes unclothed, occasionally wearing masks to protect their identities.

You can read more about Bellocq and his Storyville portraits in a post on the Smithsonian blog, here. They’re memorable images, not just because of the nudity and the masks, but because the women seem to be captured as individuals, “off-duty.”

Bellocq has been a strong source of inspiration for the living photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, who has restaged and expanded some of Bellocq’s Storyville tableaux. I’m not really a fan of Witkin’s work, but I do know that he has influenced everyone from Alexander McQueen to David Fincher, and I’m sure that the Haus of Gaga is aware of his art too.

Witkin has posed a variety of nude models in masks, including these three hermaphrodites [correction: pre-operative transsexuals] in a parody of the classical “Three Graces.” He constantly borrows and transforms images from art history, and then the cycle is perpetuated when he in turn inspires other artists.

On the other hand, there was something else about the Fame ad that seemed familiar to me, something not quite as historical. When a certain memory came to my mind, I laughed and then I tracked it down on the internet.

Remember those little muscular men? (Apparently the model Zeb Ringle posed for most of them.) Well, they reminded me of certain posters and prints that were sold at shopping-mall gift shops in the late 1980s and early 1990s (and still might be sold there, for all I know.)

These “bodyscapes” by the “self-taught photographer” Allan I. Teger (as you can see by the copyright information!) play with scale by placing miniature human figures on a nude body.

I’m still not sure whether these scenes are meant to be humorous, or whether I’m laughing for the right reasons. I actually haven’t thought about them in years, and I didn’t expect them to surface in my memory in connection with Lady Gaga, that’s for certain.

Part of the fun of Lady Gaga, for me, is seeing how she and her collaborators, her fellow magpies, pick and choose from fashion and art and popular culture of all kinds. I’m probably making my own connections here, like a game of free association, but that’s part of the fun too.

What do you see in Lady Gaga’s Fame advertisement?

Images: Bellocq photographs via Fraenkel Gallery; Witkin photographs via Edelman Gallery and Museum of Contemporary Photography; Allan I. Teger photographs via Bodyscapes.

To read more posts in this series, click here.

I’m constantly gathering images for my posts about art history and perfume advertising, and I’ve come across many beautiful examples from the past century. I’ve also encountered some ads that have not aged well at all. Here are five perfume advertisements that seem (to me, at least) unappealing, borderline offensive, or just plain odd.

“To make you feel especially feminine,” Yardley proposes (in addition to its fragrances)… a Madame Alexander doll, playing cards. “Of course,” as they add. There was a series of these ads. Some kind of cross-promotion? I do not know. (1957)

“Good Fighting. Good Hunting. Good Loving.” A “gri gri” is an African good-luck amulet or protective talisman. Weil is a venerable Parisian perfume house. The less we say about this ad, the better. (1946)

Many vintage perfume ads are valued for their elegantly styled models, their artistic photography, and the evocative names of their featured products. And then we have Nectaroma (“goes with a woman”) from Tuvaché. (1961)

Centaur “Massage Cologne”: it’s “half-man, half-beast, all-male.” And more than a little repulsive. Plenty of cleavage and body hair, plus a confusing concept. Does anyone really want to be, or to mate with, a centaur? (1967)

“Mommy, don’t cry… I’m sure Daddy’s giving you Arpège.” Nothing sells a classic like the suggestion of domestic violence, apparently. Promise her anything… (1965)

Images: advertisements from VintageAdBrowser and various online auctions. Top photo via Christies.

I came across this beautiful advertisement from 1909, in which Houbigant used an illustration by Alfonse Mucha to promote a fragrance named La Rose France, and wondered how it came to be. Then I found this post on a blog devoted to Houbigant’s perfumes and perfume bottles, which answered all my questions and then some. Do give it a read!

(To re-read my own take on a present-day Anna Sui perfume ad that pays homage to Mucha, see here.)

Image: H-Prints.

In my art historical research, I occasionally come across perfume and cosmetics advertisements in old periodicals. I really should share some of my favorites here, since I know you’ll appreciate them!

This ad for Crown Perfumery’s Violet perfume was published in Overland Monthly magazine in 1896. I love the rendering of the packaging and bottle (which Clive Christian adapted for his own use when he purchased Crown in 1999!) and I’m intrigued by the “No chemicals used” line, since I didn’t realize that “all-natural” was being used as a fragrance marketing claim as early as the 1890s.