A Painter's View of His Country, No. 1, a SEATO art sheet in the USIA files

A Thai-language art sheet distributed in Bangkok, catalog date 25 June 1964, reproduces three paintings by artists from Pakistan, Thailand and New Zealand, each with a portrait and biography. Its printed credit names the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and the National Archives keeps it with U.S. Information Agency posters (NAID 6949254).

Three paintings and a motto

The sheet reproduces three paintings, each with a portrait of its painter and a biography. A green banner carries the title and a motto. The archive gives the motto's sense in English: the language every nation understands is the language of art. The painting captions and the credit line are transcribed in Thai.

บ้านเมืองในสายตาของจิตรกร - 1

ภาษาที่ทุกชาติเข้าใจ คือ ภาษาของศิลป์

"ตำข้าว"--ภาพสีน้ำมันฝีมือ เค. เอ. ปาเซ็ท ศิลปินปากีสถาน

"ไปตักบาตร์" ภาพสีแกะไม้ ฝีมือประหยัด พงศ์ดำ ศิลปินไทย

"ไร่ยาสูบ พังงาโตตารา เนลสัน" ภาพสีน้ำมัน ฝีมือ ดอริส ลัสค์ ศิลปินนิวซีแลนด์

[...]

องค์การสนธิสัญญาเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ (สปอ.) จัดพิมพ์

According to the archive, the three artists come from Pakistan, Thailand and New Zealand, and the printed credit names the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization as publisher. The archive's machine translation, which it labels unverified, renders the captions as "Rice Pounding," an oil painting by K. A. Paseth; "Going to Offer Alms," a colour woodcut by Prayat Pongdam; and "Tobacco Farm, [place name] Nelson," an oil painting by Doris Lusk. Its note says the biographies and one place name are uncertain.

Two names on one sheet

The maker line in FRAME reads "Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), as printed; distributed by U.S. Information Service posts." The legible text on the sheet names only the treaty body. The National Archives files it in the U.S. Information Agency's series of propaganda posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, item 306-PPB-329. FRAME codes the issuer type as "State," the audience as a foreign public, and the source category as "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure."

Reading it

FRAME tags glittering generalities and transfer. The motto about a universal language of art is the generality; it cannot be wrong and does not say anything checkable. Transfer works through the paintings themselves, which lend the prestige of art to the program behind the sheet.

There is nothing sinister in printing good paintings, and an exchange of art among countries is a mild form of persuasion. The issue is the same one that runs through the agency's files: a reader in Bangkok saw a treaty organization's name and nothing about the American service that, per the record, put the sheet in circulation. Here at least the named publisher was a real treaty organization, not an invented group.

For an American-sponsored tour that named its sponsor on the poster, see the University of Denver Jazz Band. The USIA hub separates overt sheets from covert ones, and the gallery holds more from the same series.