Page 34 - Studio International - August 1966

This is the first real room. Mae I'm-no-
Angel West could have sat on this settee.
In fact it's a still from a Busby Berkeley
musical, a quiet scene away from the
dancing thousands. But the style is em-
phatically of the thirties. Or rather, not
emphatically: Upton chose the architectural
style, not for 'camp' or nostalgia or satire,
in fact for anonymity. Fashion may render
this style interesting for us, but time will
prove it anonymous. Do you suppose the
1860s thought the 1830s were 'camp'?
Fortunately we'll never know. In this
drawing a few alienation devices remain:
the collage marbling paper in foreground.
With infinite pains Upton creates the
illusion and then throws it out of the
window.

1966 Watercolour and collage
1966 Pencil and watercolour
This is not a landscape but a view of a
landscape. We are still in the room, turn
around and look through the window. We
see a landscaped lake viewed from
Monana Terrace, architect: Frank Lloyd
Wright. The dream project of 1911. The
actual source for this drawing was another
drawing by the great man's greatest
draughtsman, Marion Mahony Griffin. She
remains the only architectural draughtsman
who thought that the style of the drawing
was important beyond its descriptive
function. Upton the artist, not the architec-
tural draughtsman, has reversed the
process. For him the subject has become
important again, beyond the aesthetic
non-function of the drawing. In the
middleground do we see parallel lines, or
water? Wash. The mark on the paper is
wash, the artist puts it down clear-eyed
and steady-handed, we create the illusion
of water for ourselves and he helps us
along. We are not so far from Corot's view
of Avignon, but have been brought there
by the opposite road. Frank Lloyd Wright's
terrace is Upton's Palais des Papes—it's
just a building. The writing below is like a
frame sample, for me for one it does not
alienate the illusion, it leads the eye into it.
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