Smell is the most ephemeral of the 5 senses and surprisingly, the most evocative. In art, scent remains a source of inspiration and a versatile medium for depicting abstract concepts, cultures, identities and humanity at large.

Why Scent Matters to Art. Scent behaves differently from other “materials” used in art (paint, musical notes, marble, wood etc.). It is fleeting, mobile, dynamic. As olfaction is directly linked to the limbic system (the emotion and memory brain center), scent can trigger instantaneously personal memories and experiences. Contemporary olfactory artists and researchers have taken advantage of these properties of smell sense to create multidisciplinary pieces of artwork with cultural, social and human relevance. Olfactory art, recognized as genre since 1980’s, uses scents, including perfumes, as a medium for artistic expression. In 1921, Marcel Duchamp pioneered this branch of art by exposing visitors of his exhibitions to unexpected smells (scents of cedar, coffee and burning hemp rope etc.), inviting them to engage with all senses during their tours.

Scent in Literature. Literature has long used scents to illustrate how certain smells can trigger significant memory recollections and how it could impact minds.

The smell of madeleine cake dipped in tea sparking an immediate travel back to childhood, described in Proust’s monumental seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time, exemplifies the recollection of a deep, positive emotional memory triggered subconsciously by a scent. This association between an external sensory stimulus (smell of madeleine cake) and a profound past experience has now become a well-defined symbol for any sensory cue (smell, taste etc.) that evokes precious childhood memories.

Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer makes scent the central tool of the main personage’s power over other people. The novel uses vivid olfactory images to describe strong emotions and actions, such as power, obsession, desire, manipulation etc. Here, human scent becomes central to personal identity and mass manipulation.

Smells in Paintings. Paintings, as objects, can have smells, either from the volatile organic compounds that evaporate as paint dries, or, in the case of older paintings, from storage or varnish. What could not be replicated until recently was the smell intended by the painter for his artwork to express. Now this is possible.

In museal settings, through scientific methods, smells meant to be perceived in several famous paintings, were recreated in real life. For example, the scent of walnut wood, oil, tempera paints and varnish of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Lady with an Ermine” located at the national Museum in Kraków, was encapsulated in the tip of a special pen, for visitors to experience it.

The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, recreated the odors from Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens’s The Sense of Smell, allowing visitors to smell notes like civet (using a synthetic civet aroma), jasmine, orange blossom, roses, irises, connecting them directly to the painting’s intended olfactory experience.

Scent as a Defining Urban Heritage and Modern Architectural Element. Capturing the past history and culture through scents is not an easy task. This monumental work of love is now completed. The Odeuropa’s online “Encyclopedia of Smell Heritage” focuses on developing a virtual museum and database of Europe's olfactory heritage from the 1600-1920. Multidisciplinary experts in history, AI, computer vision, computational linguistics, museology have worked together to identify, document and analyze smells in order to understand how they shaped European history and culture. The result is the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph (EOKG) that contains 2.5 million smell experiences. These smells can be explored with the Odeuropa Smell Explorer tool.

 Recently, visionary architects, urbanists and artists are designing cities with “smellscapes” to create better, multi-sensory urban environments. A “smellscape” is the whole "landscape" of scents that emanates from a specific place. It includes natural scents (from flowers, grass, soil after rain, trees, salty air in a coastal city etc.), man-made smells (gasoline, food, garbage etc.). This approach connects urban architecture and inhabited places with odors released by these populated areas and with the human experience of the city’s unique smell. It also contributes to our understanding of the emotional connection people feel to a particular place, and the effects of these smells on human well-being.

“Smellmaps” are visual representations of community's “smellscape”. It documents where different smells originate from and map them using colors and symbols. The olfactory exploration of cities through “smellwalks” pioneered by Kate McLean, can be used in urban planning, cultural studies and art. More recently, Sissel Tolaas has also recorded odors from markets, industrial or decayed places as social research in spaces and time.

I applied the “smellwalk” approach to recreate the “smellscape” of the Bucharest’s architectural Old Historic Center. The Romanian’s capital, Bucharest, my birth town, a contrast of Art Nouveau and modern buildings, is worth visiting. This memory of “being at home” is bottled in the handcrafted Rapsodie D'Été Eau de Parfum.

All in all, “smellwalks” and “smellscapes” can show you how odor contributes to the identity of a place and a person, and to the well-being of those living in those places.

Composing Invisible Musical Sheets with Fragrances. Music and perfume share a similar language (notes, accords, harmony, composition) to describe the elements of creating a piece of art. Thus, pairing the two is only natural.

Music inspires perfumers to create new fragrant compositions. I was inspired by soleá, considered the “mother of flamenco”, to create another Eau de Parfum, Espíritu Flamenco Eau de Parfum. This perfume embodies the deep passion but somehow contained energy and rhythm of flamenco’s dance, music and verses, the liberating force that we all experience when we connect with our own creative spirit.

Nowadays, musicians and perfumers have started to collaborate in designing multisensory experiences where scents, when released, create an invisible olfactory symphony that augments the musical experience.

Why Using Scent as Art Medium. Scents and fragrances have:

•  Direct link to our deepest emotions and memories. It gives any artwork an immediate, primal, visceral impact.
•  Can augment the multisensory immersion. Scents can deepen personal experiences beyond visual or auditory inputs.
• Can provide historical, cultural, local insight and vibes. 
  

However, scents and odors are:

• Ephemeral. Scents mix with other odors and disappear over time.
• Response to odors is personal and unpredictable. It depends on cultural background, personal experiences, either positive or negative, the presence, deficit or lack of smell etc. However, this personalization is what makes scent such a powerful medium for experiencing art as a whole.

 Scent can transform other art media into a holistic immersive experience. When used as an art medium, scent can create its own universe, a space for subtle, unique, profoundly human experiences. This is why perfumery, in particular artisan perfumery, bridges art expressions, cultures, human emotional memories and time.

We invite you to complete this olfactory story by sharing here your comments with our Olyantis community and with us about if and how scents influence your own creative endeavors.