POSTCARDS FROM THE SEINE

”The two and a half decades after World War II witnessed a frustrating, often angry, sometimes ineffectual, and-to be perfectly honest-often touching attempt to come to some sort of ”gentlemen’s agreement”  concerning the International Art Program … superheated by the cold war …, it should come as no surprise that it also exerted pressure on the debates involving art and culture. In the end, the International Art Program provided neither an ideological ”fallout shelter” for American propagandists, nor an avenue for speaking to the ”human spirit” so desired by American art lovers.” ( Michael Krenn )

The art of Robert Sivard has to be looked at from the context of post war U.S. foreign policy and the narrow  perspective of art viewed as a cultural export during the cold war;  part of the larger cultural diplomacy overseen by the State department of which Sivard managed the fine arts branch as a high ranking official within the United States Information Agency ( USIA ). The utopic view, held by many, was a sincere feeling that art would serve as an international language of understanding and healing in a world scarred, partly ruined and politically divided by a global war. Art was seen as a fallout shelter of the human spirit. The conflict was never resolved due to deep ideological divisions, between those wanting art as propaganda and versus the art as art debate faction.

In 1950, Sivard began experimenting with shows of graphic art, less costly hence less controversial than painting, for European exhibition. By buying several strikes of a print from an artist, Sivard was able, at low cost to send out dozens of exhibits of framed graphics to posts around the world through the AFA ( American Art Federation ). The situation was delicate.Even President Harry S. Truman joked that abstract painting was akin to attaching a paint brush to a mule’s tail.” And the Soviets were perhaps more disturbed than anyone: ” The modern art of America, which eventually found its way to Moscow in 1959, was ‘bourgeoise’ and seemed to be symptomatic of a deep and threatening mental psychosis”.

The issue of the political convictions of the artists and the pressure on Congress from the McCarthy committee on communism provided additional pressure to censor works of art, particularly as part of a Congessionally funded projects such as ”Communication Through Art” under the direction of Margaret Cogswell. If nothing else, the work of the International Art Program certainly fulfilled the dictum of the artist Georges Bracque that ”Art is meant to disturb”, especially within this  toxic mix of art, politics and economics.

Sivard’s evolution recalls the urban legend  about a novelist who started writing because he wanted to learn to type. Then there is another, perhaps also fudged tale about an art school trained foreign diplomat,  Robert Sivard , who took up oil painting because his wife wanted a souvenir of Paris. In 1949, Robert Sivard moved to Paris with a job as director of visual information for the United States Embassy. After Sunday-painting his first ”souvenir” , a French grocery store, Sivard( 1914-1990 ) was apparently hooked and couldn’t stop. His government post gave him a chance to paint shop fronts in Moscow, San Juan, New York, Rome and other cities.

In our present age of big box retailing, and miles of aisles, Sivard’s subject matter, that hardy and resourceful breed, the small businessperson and shopkeeper,  is almost as much an anachronism as Sivard was; a painter who is interested more in subject matter than school or technique. He was a portratist who searched for the character revealing details and the wear and tear of life from a perspective that implies the eye level of a serious, but not somber adult. The style can be termed psuedo-primitive because of the flatness and deliberately stiff drawing . However, there is an elaborate use of texture, neat composition and clear soft colors which break from the genre. Close enough to see texture and character flaws, the creases of age and the lines of laughter.His choice of subject matter, the narrative quality of his work, skilled use of color and detail, and the implied humor, resulted in a signature style  different from his contemporaries.Call it fantasy in reality. The vision was simple: the character lines of a city, and its civilization are in its side streets such as the ”les petites rues” at the heart of Paris. Remove them and the soul of the city will be gone even though the Seine still flows and the great landmarks remain.

”Sivard, in horn-rims, has the quietly desperate air of a man who has dealt with unceasing pressures for so long that a sudden letup would give him a bad case of the bureaucratic bends. But as his fun-filled, detail-packed little canvases show, this worried air conceals an indestructible sense of humor. He started his artistic life as a muralist’s assistant, later became an adequate commercial artist and illustrator, then dabbled a bit in abstractionism. But he had to give it up: “It’s awfully hard to get a touch of humor in an abstraction, and I can’t keep going without a touch of humor.’ ” ( Time Magazine, 1963 )

”Sivard’s “touch of humor” is in all his paintings, though it sometimes takes a jeweler’s loupe to read all the fine print. In one painting a Paris streetwalker in all the trappings of her profession, from necklace cross to handbag to ankle bracelet, loiters in her doorway next to the Hôtel Beau Séjour. There will be no séjour today, however; on the hotel’s door a tiny sign reads: “Closed for vacation.” In another of Sivard’s pictures, a Parisian nun is emerging from a Metro station with the frosted-glass peacock’s fan of the canopy forming a sort of art nouveau halo behind the good sister’s head.” ( Time Magazine, 1963 ) Au Negre Joyeux, existed in the 1

#8217;s; it was a left bank artist’s hangout and an old haunt of Ernest Hemingway:

Most of Sivard’s paintings seem to say that the small detail one sees out of the corner of the eye offers frequently the most delightful, and meaningful glimpse of life. In most of his work, a fleeting observation becomes the center of attention. What distinguished his work was an eye that captured at a glance, the momentarily disappearing detail and sees in that seemingly insignificant encounter something of a joke, a truth, and a sense of permanence.