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 And sometimes the windows are pulled apart slightly, revealing an entirely different outdoor world,
again reminding us that these are paintings. Worlds, not windows. Meditative worlds.
A steep shadow, such as we saw in Toledo, cloaks a part of the facade in a color-changing veil,
but still it stubbornly remains a grey patch, not a shadow. The artist is in charge, not the phucking photons.
There are many moon circles, a favorite shape in all his work and periods.
I don’t know if he worked from realism to abstraction as he went through the windows series,
or in the reverse direction, or in both directions at the same time.
The most realistic piece in the series is reminiscent of his artists’
colony drinking buddy, Edward Hopper.
Reich said Hopper showed him, “the validity of large space as a
means of expression,” validating Reich’s intent, very early on,
to use areas of flat color because, “I wanted the observer’s eye to
rest in certain areas.”
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That was the approach that won him his first accolade,
first place in the Placer County Fair, and he decided to become an artist, “but not a commercial one.”
He was 16.
Fellow Wizards
He also consorted with Georgia O’Keeffe, Virgil Thomson, Alec Waugh, Mark Tobey, Douglas Moore,
Cid Ricketts Sumner and William Saroyan. He worked for architect Bruce Goff whose coal house was arson-destroyed.
He liked Satie, Tati and Robbe-Grillet
He was one with Rauschenberg who told us, “There are so many more interesting things to be than right.”
They both disliked art that comes across as a solution to a problem.
And he was with Tobey when he said, of Pop Art, “Nothing from within.”
He created other distinct themes, but they would disappear to reappear later,
or they elided from one period to the next.
The signature draftsmanship continued strong through all periods.
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