Robinson Fredenthal: We remember him by his work

On the way to the Jersey shore, we pass Roger-Wilco liquor store. Out front is a huge spiral structure twisting toward the sky, a sculpture by Robinson Fredenthal of Philadelphia. Sadly, his obituary appeared in today's Inquirer, dead at age 69 of complications of Parkinson's disease.

I was surprised he lived that long. When I interviewed him for Art Matters I was 38 and he was early 40s. His disease was so bad he popped L-Dopa pills every 10 minutes to enable his limbs to do more or less what he wanted them to do. His movements were quick and jerky, uncontrolled. I spent a few days with him for my profile, accompanying him to the University of Penn campus he so loved, and where at least one of his enormous sculptures resided.

I also went w/him to his neurologist's office where his odd physical behavior commanded numerous looks in the waiting room. I remember watching a female patient who, in retrospect, exhibited tongue- and head-rolling behavior from tardive dyskinesia which people get who are on long-term antipsychotic meds.

Robin lived at the top of a very long stairway on top of a French restaurant he had never eaten at. He was too poor. His apartment was sparsely furnished. No rugs. He was very smart. Brilliant. My job gave me the opportunity of being around people smarter than me so I could learn. I didn't know a thing about art but I never mentioned this to anyone. When writing about Fredenthal, I left my kids with a babysitter and went to work in my mother's living room on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter. I wanted to do justice to his work so I began writing a little differently than I'd ever written before.

I envisioned the writing of Dante's Divine Comedy and how he had described the wonders of The Inferno..... short sentences. I did the same in my article on Fredenthal. It worked. The story came out very well. I had taken a leap in my writing.

About a year ago I began to wonder what had become of Robin. I did an Internet search and made a few phone calls. Couldn't find him. Then by chance I learned he was in the Inglis House for disabled people. "I will not come visit you in your plaid bathrobe," I had written in a poem I wrote about Fredenthal years ago.

During our time together we discussed creativity. I told him I envisioned it as visiting a springhouse below ground, the kind where you keep meat and cheeses, but that you never know when you'll be let in or not. I wrote a poem about that too and read it to him over the phone. He agreed that not all days would we be let inside.

Who lets us in?

One more thing. His father David Fredenthal (1914-1958) was an artist and war correspondent for Life magazine. I drove over to the Philadelphia Library, Northeast Regional Branch, where at the time (1984) they had volumes and volumes of bound Life mags available for the readers to look at. I found his dad's articles, photocopied some, and brought them for Robin to see.

When he and I parted after I'd written about him, I sent him a NY Times magazine cover of Stephen Hawking in a wheelchair. I wrote a balloon caption from Stephen reading: Dear Robin, The sky is the limit. - SH