The subject critical to artistic practice: the question of when a work of art is finished. The viewer’s imagination is necessary to complete the works. Some of history’s greatest artists explored such an aesthetic, among them Titian, Rembrandt, Turner, Cezanne, Monet. The intentional unfinished embraces the open-ended.

“To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid of its soul” ……Picasso

“One always has to spoil a picture a little in order to finish it.”  …Delacroix

“A work is complete if in it the master’s intentions have been realized.” ..Rembrandt

“Under attack is the rationalistic notion that art is a form of work that results in a finished product.”  … Robert Morris.

“The last works of artists… and their unfinished pictures are more admired than those which they finished, because in them are seen the preliminary drawings left visible and the artists actual thoughts.” …. Pliny the Elder

To know when to lay the paintbrush down is one of the most difficult decisions to make. The fragrance developer and evaluator must be conscious of this quandary. They must be sensitive to where the customer’s imagination takes hold and where it is stifled. They are an important, necessary voice to the perfumers developing of a fragrance. The fragrance developer and evaluator give valuable insight into the process of the perfumer’s creation. They, all must allow the customer’s imagination to flourish by not cluttering up the fragrance with too much detail. There has to be a mutual understanding of THE UNFINISHED—THOUGHTS LEFT VISIBLE.

Categories: PERSPECTIVES Philosophical Perspective

ron winnegrad

Ron Winnegrad has been a Perfumer and teacher for 46 years. As a perfumer, Ron has been able to express the world he sees through a rainbow of olfactive and emotive visions. As a teacher, Ron has helped others to see fragrance through his own multi sensorial lens.