Abstract:
Since the Japanese took power in Taiwan, the colonial government initiated “modernization” programs systematically and carried out political, economic, cultural and educational reforms through modern Western institutions. Taiwan, as a result, gradually departed from traditional folk society and became a modern civil society. Amidst such epochal transformation, with the implementation of modern urban planning, a “new landscape” was formed: like fresh shoots budding after rain, public facilities such as Western buildings, roads, parks, railways, bridges, harbors, airports and telecommunications steadily emerged. The traditional scenery of the Ming and Qing comprising of “local” characteristics metamorphosed, while “public” characteristics of the urban living space were constructed, expressing the diverse and modern lifestyles of the populace.
The government-sponsored Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibitions in 1927 and, later, the Taiwan Governor-General Arts Exhibition exerted unequivocal influence on the formation of New Art as part of the modernization process in Taiwan. The artists, however, in their so-called pursuit and construction of Taiwan’s “local color” also committed themselves to exploring the various possibilities of representing Taiwan. Interestingly, in doing so, they produced a number of exhilarating works of art based on the theme of “contemporary scenery”. These works of art not only became quintessential renderings of landscapes imbued with contemporary significance, they also clearly revealed the colonial government’s motive to build a new urban vista and public space through their policy of modernization.
These images reflecting and representing the “new landscape” that resulted from processes of modernization are the most important visual materials to our investigation of the substance and meaning of Taiwan’s modern, urban, scientific and civilized way of life and public cultural development. Many modern artists in Taiwan participated in urban public life and experienced shifts in their observations of landscapes and in their perspectives in literary expression as a result of having adopted a modernized civic identity. They thereby provided possible models for viewing contemporary landscapes and facilitated the completion of the conceptual construction of Taiwan’s modern urban landscapes. It is within this context that this paper, by focusing on how modern artists in Taiwan explored and illustrated ways of the reading, thinking and writing the modern Taiwanese landscape, seeks to rethink the meanings and problems of modernization as seen in the “landscape compositions” created under Japanese colonial rule.
