In this article, Justo Pastor Mellado explores the immediate connections that Nicanor Parra created for objectual (object-based) drawing in his Trabajos Prácticos series on the occasion of his exhibition in Madrid. The author raises methodological questions concerning the definition of a bordering, interdisciplinary kind of poetry—something that is generically recognized as “visual poetry” and, in this particular case, as “object poetry.” Pastor Mellado places that border zone between the visual arts and literature as a strategy for assessing Parra’s work, which arises from the latter rather than the other way around. This is why his works are so meaningful and of such undeniable experimental value (since the object is already considered to be a normal process in the visual arts). In this context, the author believes that the “anti-poems” (the actual texts) create a dynamic combined with the visual arts, which is why he roundly criticizes Parra’s decision to invite pure visual artists to illustrate his anti-poems. He did this, specifically, in Artefactos and in Chistes parra (para) desorientar a la policía (poesía). Finally, Pastor Mellado takes great pains to explain the phrase “trabajos prácticos” [practical works], particularly in terms of the various connotations of the adjective involved, associating it with (among other things) Parra’s background as a teacher of rational mechanics.        

It may have been Nicanor Parra (1914–2018) who introduced an “objectual alternative” to Chilean poetry with his so-called “trabajos prácticos” [practical works]. In fact, whatever relationships Chilean experimental poetry has created have almost always been with visual arts, specifically in the field of collage, the use of written quotes, and poetic action.    

According to Justo Pastor Mellado (b. 1949), the objectual tradition has taken root in the visual arts discipline rather than in literature. For that very reason Parra’s work is twice as valuable because it introduced what had, until then, been an “absent niche” in Chilean poetry.

All of the above helps to reconstruct a genealogical history of both the poetry and the visual arts in Chile, above all with respect to objectual practices, whose archeology leads us back to the member of the La Mandrágora group, Jorge Cáceres. Indeed, Cáceres was already exhibiting some of his objects at Soirée Surrealista, an exhibition held in Santiago in 1943. Pastor Mellado also documents the objectual aspect of the visual work created by Juan Luis Martínez and Cecilia Vicuña in the mid-1960s. He thus shows that the objectual work produced in Chilean literary circles was different from what appeared in the mid-1970s, particularly as regards the visual arts produced by Juan Pablo Langlois and Gonzalo Díaz.  

[For other texts written by Parra, see the following in the ICAA digital archive: “Artefactos” (doc. no. 753705); “Chistes parra (para) desorientar a la policía (poesía)” (doc. no. 753714); and “El quebrantahuesos” (doc. no. 752517)].  

[For more information about anti-poetry, see “Nicanor Parra: La escritura antipoética” (doc. no. 753723); “Poemas concretos” (doc. no. 753749); “El proyecto del texto absoluto en la antipoesía” (doc. no. 753760) by Iván Carrasco M.; and “Del vanguardismo a la antipoesía” (doc. no. 753734), written by Federico Schopf].