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 The public reacted to these ironic and inventive images, sometimes with laughter, occasionally with disdain or anger.
The Candy Store owner kicked him out of the gallery he had helped build because of images she misinterpreted. E.g. the chocolate pudding vagina.
Viewers, inveigled by the alarming and amusing images, missed the point, and that was not unexpected, and not unintended.
Reich’s point and purpose was to view the objects illustrated by his cut scraps in the same way the camera viewed and processed them.
Not as they are, but as they are depicted in magazines, with their thrilling
highlights and luscious shadows. Reich loved showing off his dexterity as he copied the color printing process, even to the point of imitating mis-registrations.
Sometimes images were pared down to the point of abstraction, so the viewer is struck by a whole complex of relationships and tries to tie together the fragmented original subjects.
The mind tries to complete a sentence that never existed. An aggressive puzzle.
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When his pieces shared a gallery with Eadweard Muybridge, I said Reich was commenting, derisively, on the same insistence upon synthetic realism that
motivated Muybridge’s experiments.
A filmmaker, looking at Muybridge, asked me, “Why do people want to re-create motion when the whole world is in motion?” Reich’s question was, “Why do people insist on realism in art when the whole world is real?”
And aside from being real, it’s all made up.
He reminds us that sense in art is due to the artist’s imagination, not our own visual habits and prejudices.
Reich said that realism is a mocker and that it provides people with the kind of “ready definition” they need to keep their appreciation at merely a visual or physical
level.
Hence realism and craft in his work was “entirely beside the point and should be taken for granted.
“I am not trying to flex any muscles. I have long wanted to show that realism is not the accuracy the eye thinks it is.
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