The smell of money | ISTITUTO MARANGONI (2024)

What does money smell like? Find it out by visiting the exhibition l’Argent dans l’art at La Monnaie de Paris, which opened on 30 March and runs until 24 September 2023, exploring the connection between art and money from ancient times to the present day.

Presented at the Hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris, the exhibition L'Argent dans l'Art ("Money in Art") explores over 20 centuries of art history focusing on the complex relationship between art and money

The exhibition is a journey through the last twenty centuries of art history, with nearly 150 artworks – from Warhol to Duchamp – illustrating how the concept of money has changed over time.

Marinus Van Reymerswaele, Les collecteurs d’impots

In celebration of this show, perfumer Julien Rasquinet (of IFF-International Flavors & Fragrances, a leading perfume company) created the fragrance l’Argent dans l’air. “I wanted to capture all the different aspects of banknotes,” explained the fragrance designer. “From the smell of the paper they are made of to the scent of fingerprints or ink.”

The olfactory pyramid of this ‘scent of money’ starts with the olfactory notes of a banknote that has just left the Mint “and then moves on to more ‘iridescent’ and woody notes reminiscent of the smell of old banknotes.”

Albert Maignan, La Fortune passe, 1895

Julien Rasquinet also said he was inspired by the words of the exhibition’s curator, Jean-Michel Bouhours, on the difficulty of quantifying the value of an artwork. “Art imposes an ideal, irrational, fluctuating and even gaseous value because it explores what cannot be quantified: desire, pleasure, dreams and even impulses, exacerbating what Karl Marx called ‘the enigma of value’.” The perfume, created as an ambient fragrance, is sold in this institution’s museum boutique.