顏水龍與一九五○年代的臺灣手工業

Yen Shui-Long and Taiwan Handicraft in 1950s

顏水龍在戰後臺灣的現代工藝運動以往一直以「藝術創作」的角度來檢視，並傾向凸顯出藝術家個人的功績，而缺乏了將其運動置於現實歷史脈絡的觀點。在這篇文章，我試圖去描繪顏水龍的工藝活動與一九五○年代國家手工業政策、文化意識型態間的對立。顏水龍先後在工藝品生產推行委員會、南投手工藝班以及手工業推廣中心工作，這些都是臺灣省建設廳底下的單位。雖然顏水龍致力於將現代主義的理念帶進這些機構，但是當時的官方的手工業政策主要關注於失業問題，而不是藝術教育。在這個時期，臺灣的經濟資源幾乎都被國民黨軍隊利用來支持他們反攻中國大陸，而手工業政策則被用來解決由中國撤退來臺的難民所帶來的失業問題。此外，政府大多數的心力多放在遷至臺灣的中國手工藝工人，而非臺灣當地的手工藝工廠，更遑論工藝學校。在這樣的環境條件下，顏水龍建立工藝教育機構的希望僅能被縮限在臨時性的應急計畫，最後也落空了。他在南投手工藝班的成果被用來當成一個保守極權國家的進步門面，手工藝班的產品被當成境內展覽的「展品」，用以展示臺灣手工業的現代化，以吸引在地的外國消費者。然而，一旦到了國外的展覽，這些展品的現代主義風格就被異國情調的「中國風」所壓抑，而這種風格其實諷刺地來自於政治意識型態希望展現所謂的「華夏文化遺產的榮光」，並且以展出其他「仿古」手工藝來吸引外國投資。

Yen Shui-long's modern craft movement in post-war Taiwan has long been assayed by the perspective of 'art creation' tended to highlight the artist's ambitions instead of locating the movement in the real historical context. In this article, I try to sketch his activtiy in contrary to official handicraft policy and cultural ideology in 1950s. Yen was working successively in The Committee of Handicraft Production and Promotion (CHPP), The Nantou Handicraft Workshops (NHW) and The Handicraft Promotion Center (HPC), all of which were under the Construction Bureau, Taiwan Province. Although Yen was devoted his modernism idea in those institutes, the main concern of official handicraft policy was social assistance, not artistice ducation. In this period, economical resources in Taiwan were exploited by KMT military forces for supporting them to retake mainland china, and handicraft policy was expected to solve the unemployment problems mainly resulted from the Chinese refugees due to KMT government's retreating from China. Furthermore, much effort of the government was to rescue the Chinese workers, not local Taiwanese industrial craft, let alone building a handicraft school. Under the circumstances, Yen Shui-long's hope to build a craft educational institute could only be restricted to a contingency plan and finally end in vain. His dedication to handicraft in NHW was uesd as a progressive facade of a conservative totalitarian government. NHW's products were used as exhibits in domestic exhibition for displaying the modernization of Taiwan handicraft, in order to attract local foreign consumers. However, when those exhibits came to foreign exhibition, the exhibits' modernism style was suppressed by exotic 'chinoiserie' style from other 'pseudo-antique' exhibits, which resulted ironically from the political ideology of displaying 'the glory of Chinese cultural heritage' to attract foreign investment.