7 - Violeta Parra at the Louvre: The ‘Naive’ as a Strategy of the Authentic

Summary

Una hepatitis – agrega – me iba a retener en cama durante ochos meses. Yo no podia quedar inactiva, ya que cantar ni tocar la guitarra me estaba permitido. Un día tome un trozo de arpillera y un poco de lana y bordé. No dió nada interestante. Días mas tarde volví a comenzar con nuevas ideas. Quise hacer un jarrón y salió una botella. Un ingeniero que lo vió, dijo que mi tapiz era arte, y confiado en su afirmación proseguí mi labor.

(A bout of hepatitis kept me in bed for eight months. I was not permitted to sing or play the guitar, but I was not about to remain inactive. One day I took a piece of burlap and a little bit of yarn and I embroidered. I didn't produce anything interesting. Days later, I returned to start with new ideas. I wanted to make a vase and what emerged was a bottle. An engineer who saw it said that my tapestry was art, and relying on his affirmation, I pursued my work.)

MADELEINE BRUMAGNE: But you knew how to embroider, didn't you?

VIOLETA PARRA: No, I didn't know anything. The stitch I use for embroidery is the simplest. I don't know how to draw.

MADELEINE BRUMAGNE: Then you have invented it all anew?

VIOLETA PARRA: Yes, but everyone can invent; it isn't a specialty of mine alone.

In the wake of her 1964 solo exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Violeta Parra was interviewed in Europe on several occasions. In these instances, she was often asked about the origin, subjects, and techniques used in the creation of her visual art. The first excerpt, reproduced above, is from a review of the exhibition published in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio. In this interview, Parra supplies a narrative of haphazard ‘discovery’ that excavates the roots of her artistic experimentation while she was ill for eight months in 1960.