Bonus Content: The Pleasure of Art Through Smell

What would you keep perfectly preserved in a bottle if it could be anything other than perfume?

In this bonus episode of Compelling, host Katy Wellesley-Wesley returns to her conversation with Marc Chaya, co-founder and CEO of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, for a more philosophical exchange on creativity, perception and the legitimacy of scent as art.

Marc argues that we have been taught to appreciate art through sight and sound, yet rarely through the nose. He unpacks the long technical training behind perfumery, the difference between mastering a craft and being a true creator, and Kant's idea of the genius of creativity, where imagination and reasoning fall into spontaneous harmony.

He closes with a striking answer to Katy's question, choosing to bottle the feeling of transcendence — that universal, intangible emotion great art provokes.

Marc Chaya: Marc Chaya is the co-founder and CEO (President) of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the Paris fragrance house he launched with perfumer Francis Kurkdjian in 2009. Before co-founding the Maison, Marc built a fast-tracked career at Ernst & Young in Paris, where he made partner in under ten years and later served as Global Telecoms Markets Leader, before leaving to pursue entrepreneurship and a creativity-led approach to luxury perfumery. He is known for advocating for perfumers’ authorship and for expanding fragrance into wider artistic forms, including the Palais de Tokyo retrospective celebrating 30 years of Francis Kurkdjian’s work beyond the bottle.

Visit Maison Francis Kurkdjian

Katy Wellesley Wesley: With over 18 years of leadership across galleries, foundations, and startups, Katy has built a career shaped by curiosity and a drive to explore new ideas. She spent a decade at leading commercial galleries—first at Gagosian, then at Pace, where she was Director of Exhibitions in London. She went on to lead the Villa Lena Foundation in Italy as Director, before joining the founding team of ROKBOX, a pioneering environmentally focused art logistics startup, as Sales Director. After relocating to Paris six years ago, Katy developed a strong interest in the intersection of art and luxury. To deepen this focus, she recently completed an Executive Master’s in Luxury Management and Design Innovation, a joint program between ESSEC Business School and Parsons School of Design. She now works as a consultant to brands, artists, foundations, and collectors. Among her clients is the legendary art publisher Cahiers d’Art, where she heads Commercial Partnerships.

Compelling is proudly in partnership with Cahiers d’Art.

Compelling is produced in collaboration with Cahiers d’Art, the iconic Paris-based art publisher founded in 1926, home of the Catalogue Raisonné of Picasso and most recently the Frank Gehry Drawings Catalogue Raisonné. At the heart of it's publishing program is the Cahiers d'Art Revue, one of the most significant and longest-standing annual art publications of the last century. In 2026, Cahiers d’Art will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a series of major publications, projects and exhibitions in collaboration with leading global institutions, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the MoMA in New York City and the Musée Picasso in Paris.

Visit Cahiers d’Art

Art direction by Eddie Harrop Studio
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