Esencias 05

lnitiation and apprenticeship in the world
ot smells
Ernesto Ventós Omedes
I was born into a family which has for
generations, as a tradition passed on
from father to son, been a part of the
world of fragrances and perfumes. I grew
up in a house in the Sants-Les Corts
neighbourhood amidst drums of essential
oils that tilled the air with the seent ot
lavender, mint and orange, the last two
being my tavourites as demonstrated
later by my greedy liking for sweets.
Summers in the country at my
maternal grandmother's house were an
important part of my early olfactory
experiences: the smell ot the damp earth
mixed with the aroma of the eucalyptus
trees after the rain; the fragrance of
herbal infusions; the pungent whiff of
naphthalene that became conspicuous for
just a few days a year when the season
changed; the sweet honeyed perfume of
pipe tobacco; and even the unpleasant
smell ot the cellar with its mixed odour ot
damp newspaper, wood and oid clothes.
All this plus the reek of manure and its
special ability to make any other smell
stronger. These without doubt are my first
encounters with smells despite the fact
that my true apprenticeship began when I
started working alongside my father in
the house in Sants and progressed
particularly during the three years that I
spent in Switzerland and France as
assistant to the great master Arturo Jordi.
This was how I became familiar with
the various essences and their characteristics,
while at the same time training
the memory of my nose. Detailed study of
all the various components was essential
to be able to learn gradually how to create
formulae and how to apply them to the
various products. lt was an intense
apprenticeship or initiation, that was
moulded and perfected by the daily
experience of the slow, considered process
vital to the birth of a new perfume. lt is a
task that requires a lot of time, a creation
that must be approached without haste as
you need to be aware that when you want
to give material shape to a new idea,
drawing up the formula will take many
months of work and that despite the all
the dedication and effort you put into it,
the life of the perfume may be relatively
short. Throughout the course of an entire
year, I maybe make up some ten or twenty
formulae, of which it is very likely that
only one or two are perhaps of interest,
while the rest, if they are not marketed,
lose their value very quickly.
To create a perfume, you need to spend
tim e experimenting and researching, in the
same way that you also need to
experiment and conduct research over a
long period to create a work of art. But
unlike a work of art, the perfume designer
works largely to commission, offering his
or her services to a client who determines
the basic characteristics of the fragrance
required depending on the market it is
aimed at and, above all, after research into
the people who are to buy it, their tastes,
their social origin, cultural level and even
into fashions and climate. Right from the
start, a perfume has avalue as a consumer
product.
In this respect, once launched onto the
market, perfume adapts to the characteristics
of the consumer in such a way
that normally the perfume chosen by
each person reflects his or her character,
lifestyle, preferences and personality.
Hence, a perfume reveals a lot about us.
There is no doubt that there are perfumes
that are serious, classic, modern, liberal,
extravagant - a whole host for every taste
so that everyone eventually feels singled
out and identified according to their
individual nature.
lt should also be pointed out that
mixing perfume with one's own skin seent
alters the smell ot the essences and
balsams that make it up, which is why it is
said that a perfume undergoes slight
changes when worn, personalising each
fragrance.
Another issue which I feel it is necessary
to mentien here relates to changes in social
stereotypes. Recently, we have seen how
harsh essences, such as cedar and common
flowers, which are popular in colognes for
men, are now also being used by women.
This clearty reveals that now that men and
women are growing closer, so are their
fragrances, and also demonstrates that the
age-old barriers regarding seent are
increasingly breaking down.
The initiative behind the collection
The idea ot starting up a collection
based on a visual work created using sense
of smell perceptions arose in 1978 as a
result of an exhibition entitled 0/fadory
Suggestions involving a number of
perfumers that was held at the Joan M iró
Foundation in Barcelona. The topic was
very broad and the show tried to cover the
wide spectrum of the world of smell: the
fragrances of the body, the smells of
colours, the odours of animals, the raw
materials that give off seents (plants), the
physiology of the sense of smell, smell and
popular culture, fashion in smells and the
literature of smells.
When I noticed that there was nothing
exhibited on the walls in the exhibition, I
felt the need to get in touch with painters
and sculptors to make them part of my
initiative, which had to mature over time.
First, I tried writing to artists and gallery
owners, but the response was poor. I
myself had to contact each of the artists to
present my proposa! and to try to
encourage them to share in the shaping,
representation or reflectien of olfactory
sensations and to inspire them into being
capable of visually communicating these
immaterial essences to the onlooker.
lt is quite clear that the suggestion was
an enriching challenge for all the artists,
offering them a way of linking up to a
different level of communication with a
language that is very imaginative in its
development while at the same time being
intellectual; a language that is a very
aware plastic interpretation of inhaling the
externa! world.
I am now pleased to be able to present
a selection of my collection, which has
been shaped by the close dialogue
between the suggestive evocative worlds
of the visu al and the olfactory so that the
public can share it with us and can draw
from it their own conclusions.
Learning to use our sense ot smell in
order to understand understanding in
order to use our sense ot smell
Notes on the lecture entitled The Sme/I
of Art given by Ernesto Ventós Omedes in
Lucta (Montornès del Vallès) in 1994.
In his latest work, Seeing and
Understanding Painting, Bernard Rancillac
takes his experience as a painter and
provides us with the keys to the doors of
the realm of painting, analysing the
various levels that link the onlooker with
the coded language of art.
Smelling and Understanding Painting
is my personal adaptation of t he title and
of some of the passages in Rancíllac's
work -which I will go on to detail at
certain points- to demonstrate based on
my own experience that there is another
sense, the sense of smell, that can also aid
our understanding of the language of art.
Art is a coded language, so it is essential
that we acquire a specialist view of it in
order to be able to understand it. Similarly,
it is not sufficient simply to breathe in
through the nose - to smell, inhale or sniff
- in order to reveal the codes that are
particular to perfume. Thus, the way we
look at the outside world is not the same
as the way we look at a work of art, which
requires a degree of education. Visual
perception, just like the sense of smell,
adapts itself to the nature of the objects
we perceive.
When we are born, all our physical
senses start to work, though poorly at first
due to our lack of knowledge of the
various stimuli that affect them. This being
the case, however, it is highly probable
that the first things we learn to distinguish
in life are the smell of our mother, food,
home - the things that are closest to us
and which are most familiar to us. Even
though we cannot yet appreciate it at this
stage, it is very likely t hat we are guided
by our sense ot smell as we discover the
world around us. Our sense of smell is
therefore one of the most important basic
tools we have for our own development
and understanding of our surroundings.
We should bear in mind that our sense
of smell is the only on e that we cannot cut
off by force of w ill, unlike our other senses
which we can neutralise by closing our
eyes, shutting our mouth, blocking our
ears or simply by avoiding touching things.
lt is impossible for us to close ourselves off
from externa! emanations and smells
because it is obvious that we cannot live
without breathing.
For this reason, it is easier when we are
children for us to describe what we
perceive through our sense of sight,
hearing, taste or touch because we are
able to exercise control over it. But this is
not the case with our sense of smell; this
source of perception is completely
unavoidable and abstract.
From the time we are bom, we all carry
around with us experiences we have been
through or felt that are stored away in our
memory until it builds up into a considerable
repository, with all the cultural connotations
that society inculcates into us. We become
able to perceive the wortd al most effortlessly
thanks to it despite the fact that an entire
accumulation of experience is insufficient to
be able to acquire a special sense of sight
and that what we really need is a certain
apprenticeship that will crystallise during our
daily work.
As Rancíllac says, "no-one has become
a painter simply by looking at nature, a
pretty tree or a ~eautiful woman".
Likewise, no-one can become a creator of
perfumes solely by smelling a magnificent
fragrance. Much has been written about
making perfumes and there is still a lot
being published on the world ot aromas
and fragrances, but unfortunately it is
always in an anodyne and incomplete
fashion. The book that analyses the world
of perfume to the full has not yet been
written.
Learning about smell is essential in order
to break the code of perfume, but it is the
condensation of over 40 years of
experience that assures me that it is not
only necessary to study the mechanics and
techniques and to àpply them to good
working methodology, but that a great love
of the art and craft is also an essential
element enabling us to breathe life into our
creations. A perfume or aroma without a
soul can never be a fully achieved work. For
every creator, therefore, emotion is not the
be all and end all - he or she needs to know
the job, which must be formed and shaped
day by day, and to find pleasure in what he
or she does.
The perfumer, just like the artist, has a
wide range of elements to combine in his
or her creations. The painter, for example,
knows that pictorial languages are
developed based on scientific and artístic
experimentation on the visual qualities of
colour. Colour - like any other concept - is
an important element of expression and its
power and symbolism are well known to
all experts who recognise its close
relationship with the other senses.
The colour red, for example, swiftly
suggests passion, love and even the
violence of blood, which is why it is used
in perfume making to characterise serious
colognes and sophisticated perfumes. Blue
is unquestionably a relaxing colour
denoting gentleness. freshness, joy and
nobility, and is the typical colour ot marí ne
fragrances. Green is associated with young
plants and is a colour common to
shampoos and cleaning products; because
it symbolises nature, life and growth it is
used in youthful colognes made using
natural ingredients. Romance, wisdom,
purity and cleanliness are concepts that
are always allied to the colour white,
w hich is normally used in beauty and
hygiene products. Black is loaded with
symbolism and is related to heady,
alcoholic perfumes. Yellow exemplifies the
sun, light and youth, and is a normal
colour for colognes for all the family. Gold
symbolises power and luxury.
We can clearly see that the abundant
and unrestrained connotations of colour
corne immediately to mind and that they
have a psychological effect. Obviously,
however, there are unavoidable límits to
some extent to their use. Bringing together
form and colou r and their particular
dynamics creates an inexhaustible reserve
of plastic combinations which are not
necessarily appealing or pleasant but which
should instead express certain subjective
stances.
We need to be very clear that the
purpose of visual art is not to please but to
move, for, as Schumann said, "the artist's
mission is to send light into the depths of
the human heart". The artist's duty
therefore consists not merely of mastering
torm in a pure exercise on shape, but of
adapting it to the contents that are to
move the onlooker and to force him or her
to re-experience certain sensations. The
artist, according to Kandinsky, must
educate him or herself and look into his or
her own soul, taking care of it and
developing it so that his or her externa!
talent has robes to put on and is not
simply like a lost glove from an unknown
hand, a simulacrum of a hand, empty and
without meaning.
In this way, as Rancillac suggests, if you
want to go deeper into the language of
the plastic arts and grasp its specific
connotations, it is essential to learn how to
appreciate it. We need to learn that the
artístic experience will bring us no pleasure
or joy until we can assimilate it perfectly.
This means that the satisfaction that
makes up this experience, our drawing
close to a work of art, is not an easy task,
but instead becomes a rigorous intellectual
and moral way forward. Thus, artístic
creation is not a ripe fruit ready for eating.
In order to enjoy it, we must follow a
process that the artist him or herself has
left unfinished.
A major element in many plastic works of
art is drawing. Through the line or the
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