Bob
I met Bob at my brother-in-law Con and his wife Shirley's house in Plymouth Meeting around 1954. Bob stopped in and my impression was that he sort of danced around their kitchen, very light on his feet. He was sportily dressed - on his way to another date. He struck me as being very kind and of course so bright and amusing.
I don't believe I saw him again until Ted and I moved to New York in the fall of 1956. Bob had opened the Parma Gallery on Lexington near 77th Street and lived there too. He offered to help us find an apartment and rose early and sleepy-eyed on a Sunday morning to drive us around the Upper East Side, following up on newspaper ads. He had us meet friends of his for advice on the apartment hunt. We ended up across the river on the edge of Brooklyn Heights.
I was starting at the Art Students League .... I had been awarded a full year scholarship. Bob pooh-poohed it. He said I'd be with, "Just a bunch of housewives .... not a good place". Ted was at Pratt, so we were busy, but we did go to the Parma openings, which we loved. "Strawberries and champagne", for one, bowled us over. We followed Bob's painting, enjoyed dinners at his house, and later went to all his shows at Paul Rosenberg. Late in the spring we invited Bob and his friend Harold for dinner. We lived in a small one bedroom walk-up. The kitchen was a closet with a tiny gas stove no more than 16" wide. For the appetizer course I served herring fillets with sour cream and onions. Bob screwed up his face, asked what it was, poked it with his fork and put it down. Harold explained it was okay and urged him to try it, he'd probably like it. Which he did seem to, after much fuming and fussing. The main course was leg of lamb with a vegetable souffle which he found more than acceptable. After dinner Bob looked at my paintings and remarked that they were very precocious and he was surprised I'd done them at the League. Maybe it was the scotch, but I felt his genuine support .... it meant a lot to me. He confessed he had worried about coming to dinner because he just knew it would be "bride food".
That summer Harold asked me to help him with his interior design business. A few hours a week to go and choose fabric samples from midtown firms. I remember the first I chose were for the Riverside Funeral Chapels. I think the owner's daughter was a friend of Bob's. The mornings were fun when I came up to Parma. We'd all sit around, drink coffee and hear Bob's latest stories and make our plans for the day. Bob often played classical music and sometimes kindly gave me pointers on various composers and pieces. I made the mistake of bringing an inferior coffee cake one morning and Bob gave me a lesson on selecting pastries.
One morning Bob was in the bathroom upstairs with the latest New Yorker issue. He came running down to the living room to read us a paragraph of a new Salinger story .... tears streaming down his face .... he was practically rolling on the floor, laughing so he could hardly talk. Then composure .......... back to bathroom ........ only to return in a few minutes with another paragraph. This went on til the end of the story. The writing was so original and Bob's response so contagious we all ended up in the bathroom before it was over. I reluctantly left the job after a few months. I needed more money and the work itself didn't challenge me enough.
We were busy, then started having children. Probably around 1966 or 67 Bob invited us to Sugarloaf for a weekend. We were all set to go, the car was packed, we put the three girls in the bathtub before leaving, and found Dara was covered with chicken pox! We visited Bob and met Wally at Applebachsville around 1969 or 70 ..... stopping for lunch on our drive to Philadelphia for a wedding. We all remember Maddie and Ollie, their beloved dachshunds, our girls adored them. I think Bob had just recovered from his first heart surgery. Their place was enchanting, every detail so beautifully conceived and executed.
Around 1965 Bob was here and looked at Ted's work. He was so enthusiastic and supportive, and helped him get a job at PCA. When Ted was hesitant about whether we could manage on the very low salary, Bob whispered, "Take it", in a low but firm voice. I remember one time Bob stayed over here without Wally. He missed him and spent a lot of time calling him and looking for something special to bring back to him.
We got to see Bob and Wally more often after Bob retired from the University of the Arts and I recovered from a serious illness. Museum and gallery visits in New York and many nice meals together. Gone were the days when Bob would grumble under his breath, "Half a hundred bucks for a meal!"
At Parma, Applebachsville and in their house on Pemberton Street, there were so many lovely details that Bob (and of course Wally too) had created. He had a great aesthetic eye and really loved to design and build things, be it frames or architectural details and spaces. His collection of books, art and artifacts was very personal, giving clues to his feelings, friendships and passions.
If I close my eyes I see Bob entering our foyer, all smiles and hugs, wearing an exquisite yellow bow tie, with all the hilarious details of the strange taxi ride to our place pouring out in bits and pieces of his very unique comic self.
Bob and I had a date to share hot cross buns during Lent. I was going to take him to Les Friandises East to see if theirs measured up to ones he loved from the past. Maybe I'll still go and imagine him there with me, looking carefully at the glaze and the texture within.February 2, 1999
Lois Chapman Knerr
For Bob
I realize now that Bob has been a nurturing influence in my life for almost sixty years, even before I first met him. He and Bob Kulicke and my brother Conrad were friends at Germantown High, all being in the K's home room together. I remember often sitting at the top of the stairs, at age eight or ten, soaking up Bach coming up from my brother's record player. Knowing now Bob's intense love of classical music I feel he must have had some part in its presence there.
My first memory of meeting him was when he and Conrad were outfitting a station wagon for a tour of the west before duty in the Navy in World War II. I made some suggestion that was resented as coming from a little brother, but Bob very gently said it might be a useful idea. Being accepted, and even valued, by an older boy was a big deal for me at the time.
When Lois and I came to New York in 1956, Bob was very helpful in our apartment hunting. I also remember he told us how to eat very well on $15 a week. The secret was pot roast, which provides many possibilities in the way of left-overs. Bob had high standards and didn't suffer bad food silently. However his criticism was never wounding, but flavored with the unique, dramatic wit and quizzical warmth that was central to his persona. His humor was what everything else about him seemed to grow out of. His art was pervaded by this lightness of being. Our birthdays were two days apart. I've wondered how much this might have contributed to my sense of him as a kindred spirit.
In 1965 Bob appeared in a new role ...... as my mentor ..... although I'm sure he must have assumed this role for many others. He was impressed by the sculpture I was making and helped me get a job teaching in the Sculpture Department at the University of the Arts. This altered the course of my life for the next five years, and beyond. When I later became a painter, Bob again gave me enthusiastic support for twenty four years. I was moved by his telling me he felt a joyous presence in my paintings. This kind of loyalty keeps his sensitive friendship and generosity preserved in my memories and keeps him always with me.
February 2, 1999
Ted Knerr
As a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art('72), I knew Bob both as a teacher and friend since 1970. When I had him as a teacher in painting, we ended up talking more about modern music than art. Bob would often recommend recordings of Stravinsky or other classical and jazz that he liked. He had a way of talking around the subject of the paintings I was working on that gave me more clues about what to do than if he would have talked only about technique. He would give the same amount of concern in his advice about the right paint brush I should use as he would about the right ingredients in one of his cooking recipes. Bob would get just as excited talking about ancient Mexican sculptures as he would about the most avant-guard music. His curiosity always made him buy the latest new poetry or recording. He usually attended the openings of my shows while often offering encouragement. He once was so enthusiastic about a group of paintings that I did, that he offered to take slides of them. In a typical Bob way, he figured out the best method for making the slides. His curiosity and joy of life was an example to all who knew him.
Marc Salz
Bob Keyser and I spent 37 years of our lives together. And it wasn't nearly long enough for me.
Living with Bob was a string of delights. Some of them were his kindness, gentleness, playfulness and most of all his trustworthiness. His love and faith in me were the greatest and most lasting gifts I shall ever receive. He also made me laugh a lot.
His other loves were life, including nature, and of course, art. Not just the plastic arts, of which he was a master, but the ones that nourished him. Music of all periods, from Gregorian chants to Olivier Messiaen. Theater, opera, ballet and dance were important as well. He read poetry every day. For what turned out to be his final stay in the hospital he took a book of modern poetry (I wish I knew which one) and a novel by Barbara Pym. He read all kinds of things all the time. He was devoted to James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, those difficult dieties of modernism. Bob had great faith in modernism and his complex and shimmering art amply justified that faith.
He was an art lover and a lover, a teacher and a fine artist. But, "What did Bob really like?" Well the answer is dinner parties! Especially the first ice cold Martini. He loved pleasure, friends, travel, our home and our hanging garden on Pemberton Street. He was a pleasure to live with.
Bob enjoyed many things but unfortunately, good health was not among them. During his last decade, he found it harder and harder to live as he wanted. He continued anyway, as best he could, with help from his doctors and the pharmacy. Bob had always done as he wished, it was impossible - and would probably have been futile - for him to have changed. I think he was right! And very brave. He lived four years beyond the Biblical allotment and they were 74 good and fruitful years. His was a life well spent.
Wally Reinhardt
4*12*2000
note - to add a tribute email.aaart@art-spirit.net