Violeta Parra at the Louvre: ‘Naïve’ as a Strategy of the Authentic

• In Event: Violeta Parra's Life and Legacy Reframed Across (and Outside) the Disciplines

Abstract

This paper examines the French reception of Violeta Parra’s 1964 solo exhibition of embroidered tapestries, oil paintings, and sculptures at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The language used in the reviews of Parra’s show, concomitant with the accolade it received, reflected the existing context and framework of discourse present in France, which heralded naïve art, art brut, and “primitivism.” The popularity of these genres demonstrates their importance as an avenue through which Paris created a dialogue surrounding art that was believed to be more genuine and authentic in the face of rapid modernization and post-war confusion. By looking at exhibition reviews present in prominent French newspapers such as Le Figaro and Le Monde, as well as catalogue essays from some of the Naïve shows that proliferated during the mid 1960s, the meaning of the contextualization of Parra’s artwork surfaces.

The goal of a critical examination of Parra’s artistic production is achieved through the use of “authenticity”— as posited by Adolph Reed and Regina Bendix— as a lens through which to extricate both Parra’s artistic strategies, and that of France’s artistic milieu. This paper suggests that the positive reception of Parra’s exhibition was a reflection of France’s desire for authenticity, as well as the artist’s own construction and performance of authenticity. This was not a passively received characterization of her art and her persona as inventive, naïve, and spontaneous —adjectives part of the vocabulary used to describe folk art, self-taught art and “primitive” art. Instead, Parra had an equal part in constructing this portrayal, as she emphasized the same aspects used by her critics to qualify her techniques, as well as tapped into existing French conceptions of indigeneity that aided in her own personal quest to revive Chilean rural culture and customs.

Author

• Serda A Yalkin, University of New Mexico