Page 35 - Studio International - August 1966

In these two drawings we finally reach the
inner room. No blood, no Bluebeard, no
wives immured; it turns out to be an
office. But we know it is the inner room
because it is real. We have progressed
from the invention of the first drawing,
where the marks lie alongside each other,
abstract marks creating Style by self-
regard. Vanity, etc. . . . Gradually the
abstract marks have been demoted, from
autonomous to alienative, from that to
marginal, from being marginal they have
now been eliminated. Actually Le
Corbusier designed this office for the Salon
d'Automne of 1929. There are certain
omissions in the details of the furniture,
but they serve to clarify the space which is
unchanged. The omissions are no longer
mysterious, the table does not need all
its legs, it stands on one perfectly well,
the chair on the right of the table needs no
legs at all, at any rate it does not need
them so much as we need to see the floor.
In a word, the omissions and simplifica-
tions—there are no distortions—have
become rational. Personally I like office
furniture and live surrounded by it, I like
the way it creates its own style by elimi-
nating other styles. Comparably in these
drawings, 'Function' has had its function
removed and by imagination been trans- 1966 Watercolour
formed into style.
1966 Watercolour
It remains to say further that in the context
of our time these drawings have for me
the additional quality of seeming pro-
phetic. Ask any young figurative artist of
today why he chooses the subjects he
does, he is likely to say the subject is just
a vehicle. What he really wanted was a
place to put a certain blue and a certain
red in a certain way. Johns's beer cans,
Jones's bit of skirt—in America and here
artists are finding a similar solution to a
similar problem. This solution, the empty
vehicle, a philosophical absurdity, has
been nevertheless right artistically. In
alliance with the abstract painters they
have purged subject matter. From it oozed
the soppy pus of moral blackmail. Now
purged, exorcized, braced, an artist can
face nature again, this time not slobbering
uxoriously but purified and virginal. I
foresee the enhanced development of our
relationship with reality, and Upton's
drawings are a signpost on the way. q