18Libro_Sinestesia_completo-final

Olfactory notes by Ernesto Ventós
· The sense of smell is the first sense we develop at birth. This being so, we grow up
surrounded by smells: of our family, of food, of the neighbourhood, of school.
· All of my memories of my family are linked to smells: wet earth with eucalyptus,
cups of tea at my grandmother›s, mothballs in drawers and wardrobes, tobacco…
· Art is a coded language, which makes it absolutely necessary to acquire a
specialized vision of it. The same is true of perfume: breathe in through the
nose, smell to reveal its codes.
· The way we look at the outside world is not the same as the way we look at a work
of art. This latter mechanism of perception may be similar to how smell works.
· The (olfactory) note may be pleasing or disagreeable, well constructed, even
original, surprising and attractive … but one can always find something
missing, something hard to possibly explain that will possibly give it charm, it
seems to me. That›s why I always insist that love is an essential component of
the perfumer´s craft.
· A landscape whose contemplation requires no effort can be as interesting and
as rich in suggestions as a painting or a sculpture that is unique in the world. In
many cases they are like the smells that people admire, which most of the time
are grand, but not necessarily beautiful.
· The scale I practice in smelling each day is:
Smelling art
Smelling the neighbourhood
Smelling colour
Smelling characteristics
· Oler y comprender is a work by Bernard Rancillac. Learning to smell in order
to understand—understanding in order to smell better: this is my own personal
adaptation of the title to prove that another sense, such as smell, can also
facilitate our comprehension of the language of art.
· As Rancillac observes, ‹… no one has ever become a painter from the mere
fact of contemplating nature, a beautiful tree, a beautiful woman …,› and
no one has ever become creator of essences from the mere fact of smelling a
wonderful fragrance.
· Artists express themselves by means of gestures; at once form and colour,
volume and movement, their intrinsic qualities serving to manifest elegance
in a line, sensibility, aggressiveness, sensitive, dry, shy, sensual and so on,
qualities that are also, curiously enough, apparent in fragrances.
· It is this interrelation between the world of art and the world of fragrances
that very often allows me to interpret a work of art according to the criteria for
appreciating a fragrance.