Lenton Parr, Australian artist and educator
Hyfler/Rosner
<Melbourne Age> Geoffrey Edwards
DR LENTON PARR - AM, SCULPTOR - EDUCATOR - FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE
VICTORIAN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS - 11-9-24 - 8-8-03
One of the most distinguished Australian artists and arts educators of his
generation, the Melbourne sculptor Lenton Parr died on August 8 at Cabrini
Hospital in Malvern.
Although his health was failing in recent months, he was working on several
small sculptures at his Sandringham studio at the time of his death, and was
involved with arrangements to fabricate a major commission for the Sculpture
Park at McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin.
Happily, this commission will proceed and serve as a tribute to the
affirmative nature of Parr's artistic vision, to his strength of character,
his quiet determination to get on with the job, and to the vitality of his
imagination. In Parr's own words, he believed that sculpture should have a
"force of gesture" that would "denote life". His work did precisely this -
with its jubilant ribbons of mostly black-painted steel.
Another recent commission, several metres high, is located in full view of
passing traffic on Beach Road, Sandringham. Much to the artist's delight,
this stainless steel composition overlooks a tract of foreshore visible from
Parr's nearby home.
The title of the Sandringham sculpture, like many of Parr's titles, is taken
from a literary source - in this case, a poem, The Windhover, by Gerard
Manley Hopkins. Parr knew the poem - and many more besides - by heart. He
was especially fond of Keats, and needed no prompting to recite favourite
passages, neatly insinuated into the flow of conversation, over a drink or a
meal.
A thoughtful and methodical practitioner, a stickler for quality and
precision in his work, Parr's manner was urbane, even patrician, but never
pretentious. To some, on first encounter, he may have seemed reserved - but
a new acquaintance was soon put at ease with a ready smile, a generous
greeting or compliment and, if the occasion permitted, an amusing
observation on whatever proceedings were under way at the time.
He was a gracious host, loyal friend and colleague, a person of integrity,
and he was quick to praise the work of others, and to find the best in a
situation. A much-loved teacher, he taught and influenced an entire
generation of Melbourne artists.
Lenton Parr was a man of many parts. He was widely respected and admired by
Melbourne's arts community in particular. In a field rife with egotism, Parr
was loath to promote his own cause. Modesty was one of his distinguishing
qualities. When asked about his visionary role in transforming the then
National Gallery School (of Art) into the multi-disciplinary campus that is
now the Victorian College of the Arts, Parr dismissed his achievement as an
artist, saying: "I regard the college as the only really significant work of
art I've done in my life. The rest has been fun."
In fact, he achieved success in each of his vocations as practising artist,
teacher, arts administrator, college director, as well as member or chairman
of influential boards and committees. He was accorded a full-scale
retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1984, and
his career was documented in a handsome monograph published by Beagle Press
in 1999.
Even so, and in spite of his prominent commissions - including works at the
Australian National University, Chadstone Shopping Centre, on Manly's
promenade, Melbourne airport, and indeed across metropolitan and suburban
Melbourne - his was scarcely a household name, not that recognition of this
kind would have appealed to him at all.
As an artist, he enjoyed an enviable reputation in his field, with
architects, and certainly among his friends and peers. He was a mentor for
younger artists and colleagues and a champion of opportunities for women.
Thomas Lenton Parr was born at East Coburg on September 11, 1924, the eldest
of three brothers. He attended a local primary school before transferring to
the Preston Junior Technical School. In 1941 Parr found work as an
apprentice fitter and turner with the Victorian Railways Workshop at
Newport. Then, after an earlier unsuccessful attempt to join the army by
overstating his age, he enlisted in the RAAF in 1943 and saw eight years'
service.
Towards the end of his RAAF service, Parr decided he "wanted a life that
focused on art". Enrolled in 1951 as a student of sculpture at the Melbourne
Technical College (RMIT), he completed an associate diploma in art and
design, majoring in sculpture. In 1955 he travelled to England and secured a
position as assistant to the famous sculptor Henry Moore. Parr remembered
his two years with Moore as a time of "crucial discovery". He learnt much
from his great mentor, but wisely avoided the temptation to imitate Moore's
style of organic abstraction.
Indeed, this was when Parr made his first sculpture in welded steel,
inspired by the example of Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez and the English
artists Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick. The tough "industrial" idiom of welded
steel was then changing the direction of avant-garde sculpture - figuration
and solid form were on the way out, while abstract, open structures were in.
After returning to Australia in 1957, Parr joined the small circle of
like-minded artists who pioneered the modernist tradition of sculpture in
Australia. Mostly Melbourne-based sculptors - including several European
emigre contemporaries - the circle members styled themselves the Centre Five
group.
In 1964 Parr was appointed head of the art department at RMIT. Two years
later he assumed a similar role at the Prahran Technical College. In 1969 he
took on the position of principal of the school of art operated under the
aegis of the National Gallery of Victoria.
He was made dean of the school in 1973, and a year later his appointment was
confirmed as founding director of the newly designated Victorian College of
the Arts. Parr retired from the college in 1984, and the reputation it
enjoys today owes much to his inspired vision of a campus offering
instruction in both the visual and the performing arts.
During his administration at the VCA, Parr was invited to join an array of
boards and committees. To his friends and colleagues, the pressure of these
obligations defied belief. He was, among others, a trustee of the National
Gallery of Victoria, a member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia
Council, of the interim council of the Australian National Gallery, a
trustee of the McClelland Art Gallery and chairman of the Victorian Tapestry
Workshop. Parr's contributions were notable for the wisdom and incisiveness
of his advice and for his persuasive advocacy for artists.
Parr's contribution to the visual arts was officially recognised in 1977
when he was made Member of the Order of Australia (for services to sculpture
and the arts). In 1992 he was honoured by RMIT with the conferral of the
degree of Doctor of Art (Honoris Causa).
Lenton Parr was married three times. After the early death of his first wife
Johanna (Joan) in 1966, he married the painter Lesley Dumbrell, at the same
time adopting her son Simon. This marriage was dissolved in 1990. More
recently, in 1996, he married Sue Walker, founding director of the Victorian
Tapestry Workshop.
Lenton Parr is survived by his wife Sue, his former wife Lesley and their
son Simon and his family, and by his brothers Walter and Ernest. At the
funeral service held at All Souls Anglican Church, Sandringham on August 14,
tributes were read by Walter, Simon and by his long-time gallery
representative, Guy Abrahams.
To visit Parr's Sandringham home was to enter a domain of simple elegance
and urbanity. The garden, with its old-fashioned plants and understated
formality was an ideal complement to the impeccable order of the house
itself. Here were walls of books, works of art, a pervasive light, vases of
cut flowers, music and the aroma of freshly baked pastries, and always the
casual, captivating talk of new exhibitions, movies, wine, poetry, classic
crime fiction, astronomy and so much more.
Parr remarked recently that "the nice thing about my life is that as the
years have gone by and it's taken a final sort of shape, all the parts chime
harmoniously with the other parts. It has a kind of completeness, which I
think is what life is all about."
Geoffrey Edwards is the director of Geelong Gallery. Formerly, as the senior
curator of sculpture at the National Gallery of Victoria, he organised the
retrospective exhibition of Lenton Parr's sculpture.
Bill Schenley
> <Melbourne Age> Geoffrey Edwards
> DR LENTON PARR
http://www.mcclellandgallery.com/sculptures.html
http://www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au/adisplay.cfm?id=1
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