Pages 1 to 10 Pages 11 to 20 Pages 21 to 30 Pages 31 to 40 Pages 41 to 50 Pages 51 to 60 Pages 61 to 70 Pages 71 to 80 Pages 81 to 90 Pages 91 to 100 Pages 101 to 110 Appendix 1 to 13

BACKBook SectionsNEXT

15


Thomas Albright, reviewing the Legion show, said, “I like Reich’s work best when his major preoccupation is with pure technical execution which (in this case) includes a heat-haze sense of filtered white light, a connoisseur’s sense of tasteful color harmonies, a dynamic, dead twig pen line, and the fanciful use of such materials as wallpaper and want ads that can stamp a seal of the State of Oregon into a white sky and entitle it ‘When the Sun Comes Out It Stays.’
“Perhaps the most successful work in the exhibition is a still life, ‘The Artist’s Studio,’ which in its restrained blend of rich color and deftness of draftsmanship, reminds one of the studio paintings that Braque was doing in the Thirties.”


The Artist’s Studio circa 1960.

16


Reich’s painting in the 1962 Winter Invitational at the Legion “distills in form and color the essence of a river levee,” John Oglesby wrote in the Sacramento Bee. Another show prompted Oglesby to say that Reich’s semi-abstract landscapes “give the impression …of him being the only artist who ever goes outdoors. Reich paints nature metamorphosed.”
Reich wrote a statement for one of his earlier shows:
“I work in collage because it pleases me. I use the colors I’ve set down because I can ‘taste’ them, and I use the objects seen here because I ‘am’ each one.
“In the years that remain, I will continue with the tasting of color and with the painting of things I have been, or am being. But my method of presenting these things to others will always change.”
I don’t know if the high horizon was his idea originally. Others were doing them. The idea was to break into convention like an eldritch burglar, leaving behind recognizable but disconcerting relationships between the viewer and the familiar.
Degas said the artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.
By raising the horizon, Reich threw the foreground forward and up into the viewer’s face and space. It was effective without feeling contrived or mechanical.

BACKBook SectionsNEXT