Arthur Hacker left London in 1967 for a job as an art director in the colonial Hong Kong Government’s Information Services Department. Among his luggage would have been the air of London’s cultural whirl, glimpsed in the ambience of movies of the time: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup; revolutionary youth against the whole (damn) system in Lindsay Anderson’s If… ; and the violence and Stalinist social conditioning in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Hacker brought his tight modernist graphic skills with him, complemented by the era’s psychedelia and surreal humour. His artist’s eye was broadened by the satire and profanity of Oz magazine; the bright animation of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine; the era’s counterculture and rock music; its fashion, book, magazine and record cover design; and the ground-breaking pop art of his British contemporaries Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton. These progressive influences and an openness to depictions of life’s oddities would form a key source for Hacker’s curlicue graphical drawings. 

Hacker came to Hong Kong with a liberal, individual outlook on life and over the years he never really changed, despite in later years playing up the role of a plummy English colonial caricature – as when, at the time of the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China, he appeared on a magazine cover in military dress-uniform with a pith helmet, an impression of him that persisted for years as it hung in Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

Hacker hadn’t arrived from a vibrant city to a stagnant backwater (that offensive and inaccurate label of Hong Kong as a “cultural desert”). In the 1960s and early 70s, Hong Kong was a diplomatic and military outpost strategically located next to the Guangdong border. It was a place of foreign “China watchers” and spies, and an R&R destination for soldiers stationed in or the press covering the Vietnam War. The city’s neon-lit vibrancy was led by its young workforce and a dynamic laissez-faire economy that soon made Hong Kong the world’s largest manufacturer of textiles; an important base for the sourcing, design and production of clothing; a major producer of toys and other plastic products; and one of the world’s biggest industrial printing locations for books, magazines and print products. Epitomised by its quickly produced films, Hong Kong had emerging design and creative communities, albeit often low-cost and pragmatic, as well as promising independent artists, predominantly in what was identified as the New Ink Painting movement.

Hacker arrived at a pivotal moment to work in the city: just after the 1967 riots. Violent social unrest fuelled by the Cultural Revolution spilled into Hong Kong from mainland China as a reaction against the city’s exploitative work conditions, few educational opportunities, poor housing and minimal social services. The colonial Hong Kong Government’s approach to governance, economic and social policies, and administration radically changed after the riots, and experts with outreach and communication skills were put to work. 

The influx of immigrants into Hong Kong from the mainland in those post-war years was unrelenting, and Hong Kong’s Public Works Department and its architectural staff were tasked with quickly housing people. Hong Kong’s urban transformation was made possible by pragmatic modernist architectural design practices, perfect for quick construction using steel-supported concrete. This is seen in the exemplary City Hall precinct, the former Central Government Offices and the new schools, hospitals, health centres and housing estates. Hacker was not a lone outsider bringing new design ideas to Hong Kong, but joined an already established ethos of like-minded, young, creative professionals looking for solutions to problems, which included good modern design, and the creative use – reflecting the era – of innovative, often wacky and humourous marketing. 

Hacker’s designs in government publicity campaigns and publications were eclectic. His poster design, now in the M+ museum collection, for a Teddy Robin and the Playboys concert at “the new Blake Pier roof garden” in April 1968 was pure hippie flower-power swirling psychedelia. However, it was Hacker’s skills of modernist design with clean graphic lines and logical layout that got him a job in Hong Kong, as previously seen in his record cover design for the 1962 UK pressing of French singer Juliette Gréco’s album Showcase. Immediately after he arrived, Hacker’s designs for the Festival of Hong Kong, including the annual commemorative books, and his many government information posters predominantly followed this clean design approach.

Hong Kong was perfect for Hacker, allowing individuality and mild eccentricity. As a public servant he had a secure government job, a salary and time to travel. He settled into Hong Kong’s rhythms: sometimes expatriate, sometimes Chinese, often in between; and frequented nightlife areas such as Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui. As a keen social observer, he recognised the unique amalgam of Chinese cultures (Hakka, Tanka, immigrants from Fujian and Shanghai, for example) and keenly noted their intersection with British mores and colonial systems of administration embedded in the physical and social fabric of Hong Kong life. As an artist, he appreciated the city’s visual contradictions and tics, its physical expressions of colonial power and the raw energy of Chinese endeavour. He became a voracious collector of books, and mixed the city’s colonial anecdotes with Chinese stories and myths.  

Hacker’s Hong Kong is probably the height of his artistic achievements.
It is a distinctively personal series of drawings, different in intention from his formal government work, capturing aspects of Hong Kong, most often depicting the intersection of colonial British/European and Hong Kong Chinese life. It is a beautifully printed book with a simple rationale: a witty look at Hong Kong, comprising individual line pen drawings that incorporate Hacker’s own curlicue illustration style of flourish, scroll or spiral – the sort of curly strokes used in English calligraphy, Arabesque decoration or wrought-iron garden gates. Another design element he adopted in his illustrations was an intriguing “basket-weave”, a type of thick crosshatch that gave highlighted detailing to a drawing, as seen in the shapely jeans worn by a city girl visiting Lok Ma Chau or the ‘sail’ of the plough in his drawing and description of Yuen Long, two of his many Places of Hong Kong illustrations.

The Hacker’s Hong Kong drawings established a template. Hacker was intrigued by the city’s visual contrasts and contradictions: the old woman street cleaner wearing a Hakka hat and apron alongside a young woman sporting a miniskirt and ruffled summer brim hat. It is a classic juxtaposition of Hong Kong’s rich and poor/young and old/sartorial chic alongside Hello Kitty cuteness, scenes still seen on the city’s streets. Hacker is one of a long history of artists, photographers and filmmakers who captured the city’s pace and ironies, translating them as satire or humour on film, as a photograph or cartoon, illustration or advertising campaign. 

Over time, and especially after his retirement from government employment, Hacker’s freelance activities expanded, and he became variously an artist, designer, art director, cartoonist, illustrator, historian, collector and sometime dealer, buying and selling colonial (usually British-in-Asia) objects, especially postcards and photographs. Increasingly, Hacker became a chronicler of Hong Kong’s history and of the colonial treaty ports, particularly Shanghai, along the China coast, as well as the country’s inland rivers. He was employed to write historical anecdotes and oddities for magazines, corporate clients and historical societies – this work increasingly occupied his interest and time, overtaking his pure artistic work. This research, however, was skilfully repurposed for his own occasional self-publications, explaining Hong Kong and its history with simple text and drawings, for example:

ABERDEEN
Lord Aberdeen was a not very famous Prime Minister who once spoke quite well against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill

This sparse, inconsequential fact is illustrated by a simple line drawing of a European gentleman (presumably Aberdeen himself), with a curlicue flourish in the hair and the high-necked ruffle of his shirt. The text and portrait are unremarkable but taking a prominent background position is a frilly depiction of what looks like a cake; closer identification reveals, of course, a superbly rendered curlicued Jumbo, the iconic floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. The three almost unlinked elements of vague historical portrait, obscure text and a contemporary folly, a floating restaurant, work because Hacker is tapping into his audience’s sense of the absurd. It is in a satirical tradition, which he acknowledges in the title of the The Hong Kong Bargirls’ Progress, using the famous English painter and social satirist William Hogarth’s “progress” to make a witty observation about changing styles in Hong Kong bars.

Hacker’s spirit lingers still at Hong Kong’s FCC. He would arrive every Friday afternoon to sit in his favourite position at the counter of the Main Bar. He would then move his stool a strategic few centimetres this way or that to align his view with a pillar, so he didn’t see the odious trash that might be broadcast on the bar’s corner television (or, as he would say, with an especially elongated vowel, “the telly”). Ensconced at the bar, he would not move, and would enjoy the camaraderie and banter, and witness and participate in the laughs, fights and arguments as Hong Kong journalists and various fly-ins and hangers-on would gather at the journalists’ end of bar (in opposition – often actual – to the lawyer’s end of the bar) to review the week. He infamously memorialised the bar’s commotion and revelry in his Zoo Night cartoons, published in the FCC’s The Correspondent magazine.

Placed in another corner of the bar is the original maquette of Hacker’s best-known creation, the dragon-like anti-litter rogue Lap Sap Chung. Dividing the Main Bar from a smaller slightly quieter room known as The Bunker is the FCC logo he designed, in full heraldic curlicue flourish, etched on glass. And imposing in its polished brass importance at the FCC front door is the plaque featuring Hacker’s prominent logo, commemorating the opening 40 years ago of the FCC’s premises in the former ice-house storage rooms of the Dairy Farm building on Lower Albert Road, opened by the Governor Sir Edward Youde, whose residence was Government House on Upper Albert Road. It is just one of many historical facts about Hong Kong that Arthur Hacker embellished in his own witty words and unique hand.

Feature image: Aberdeen, Place of Hong Kong. Courtesy Wattis Fine Art.
Photo: William Furniss.

---

1967年，許敬雅從倫敦前往香港殖民政府擔任新聞處藝術總監。他的行李帶著時下倫敦的文化潮流氣息，一瞥當時的電影環境，有安東尼奧尼的《春光乍現》；有林賽·安德信的《如果》中對抗整個（該死的）制度的革命青年；還有寇比力克的電影《發條橙》中所表現的暴力和史太林式社會熏陶。許敬雅攜同他那嚴謹的現代主義製圖技巧和該時代迷幻和超現實的幽默一起來到香港。他的藝術家眼界因《Oz》雜誌的諷刺和褻瀆、因披頭四《黃色潛水艇》中的明亮動畫、因當時的反主流文化和搖滾音樂以及時裝、書籍、雜誌和唱片的封面設計、還有與他同代的英國人彼得·布萊克和理查·漢密爾頓帶來的突破性的波普藝術而擴闊。這些先進的影響力以及對描述生活怪像的開放接受將成為許敬雅日後花飾繪圖的重要靈感源泉。

許敬雅帶著自由、個性的人生觀來到香港，多年來他從未真正改變過，儘管在之後的歲月裡他諷刺地扮演一個美好的英國殖民人物的。正如1997年香港主權移交至中國時，他身著軍裝、頭戴鋼盔出現在雜誌封面上，後被掛在了香港外國記者會，讓這一印象持續了多年。

許敬雅並非從一個充滿活力的城市來到一潭死水（香港有著有失尊敬和不準確的標籤「文化沙漠」）。在60年代和70年代初，毗鄰廣東邊境、地處戰略要地的香港是外交和軍事哨崗。它是外國「中國觀察者」們和間諜的聚集地，也是越戰駐兵及戰地記者的修養調息地。年輕的勞動力和生機勃勃的自由經濟給這座霓虹燈下的城市注入活力，使其迅速成為全球最大的紡織品製造商；服裝採購、設計和生產的重要基地；玩具和其他塑膠製品的主要生產商；以及全球最大的書籍、雜誌和印刷品工業地之一。以快產電影為代表，香港擁有成本低且務實的新興設計和創意社群，此外還湧現出一批前途無量的獨立藝術家，主攻「新水墨運動」。

許敬雅值此關鍵時期來到這裡：緊接著1967 年暴動之後，由文化大革命引發的劇烈社會動盪從中國大陸蔓延到香港，抗議當時剝削性的工作條件、匱乏的教育機會、不堪的住屋條件以及奇缺的社會服務。待暴動平息後，港英政府的治理方式、經濟和社會政策以及行政管理方式均發生了根本性改變，具有宣傳和溝通能力的專家開始投入工作。

戰後那些年，大陸移民持續不斷的湧入香港，工務司署及其建築人員的任務便是迅速安置這些人。香港的城市轉型之所以可行是因其現代主義建築設計之務實，特別適合採用鋼筋混凝土來快速施工。可見的有如大會堂區、前中區政府合署以及新建造的學校、醫院、健康院和屋邨。許敬雅並非孤單外人為香港注入新設計理念，而是與一群志同道合、年輕、富有創造力的專業人士一同尋求解決方案，例如優良的現代化設計，以及反映時勢地創意採用革新、時為古怪幽默的宣傳手法。

許敬雅在政府宣傳活動和出版刊物中所做的設計不拘一格。1968 年 4月，Teddy Robin and the Playboys樂隊在新建成的卜公碼頭上蓋花園舉行演唱會，許敬雅為其設計的海報是嬉皮士花漩渦式、純粹的迷幻風格。然而，許敬雅卻是憑藉著現代主義設計的技能，在香港謀得工作。清晰俐落的圖案線條、合理的版面設計，在他之前為法國歌手朱麗特·格蕾科1962英國版專輯《Showcase》做的封面設計已可見。一到香港後，許敬雅接連為香港節、包括年度紀念冊以及眾多政府資訊海報所做的設計，都主要採用了這種簡潔的設計手法。

香港是許敬雅的宜居地，這裡能包容個人化和小怪癖。身為公務員，他擁有穩定的政府工作和收入，還有時間去旅行。他適應了香港的節奏：有時他是外國人，有時是中國人，大部分時間介於兩者之間；他頻繁出入灣仔和尖沙咀等地的夜生活場所。作為敏銳的社會觀察者，他發現了多種中國文化在此處的獨特融合（如客家、疍家以及來自福建和上海的移民），並靈敏捕捉到它們與已嵌入香港實體和社會結構中的英國習俗和殖民行政制度的交匯。身為藝術家，他很欣賞這座城市在視覺上所凸顯的衝突和抽動，它有形的表現出殖民勢力以及華人的原始力量。於是，他成了一個如饑似渴的藏書家，並將這座城市中的殖民軼事和中國故事及神話結合起來。

《許敬雅的香港》或許是他藝術成就的巔峰。這是本與眾不同的個人系列插畫集，創作初衷與他正統的政府工作不同，這些插畫捕捉了香港各方面，聚焦描繪英國/歐洲殖民地和香港華人生活的交集。 這是一本印刷精美、理念純粹的著作，旨在詼諧地審視香港。書中的手繪線條畫還融入了許敬雅自己的花飾插圖風格，如渦卷或螺旋，類似與英式書寫、阿拉伯式花紋裝飾或鐵藝花園大門上的捲曲筆觸。迷人的「籃子編織」是他在插圖中採用的另一種設計項目，那是一種用以突出細節的厚實交叉陰影線。可見如，一位到訪落馬洲的城裡女孩身上穿的修身牛仔褲，以及犁上的「帆」。這兩幅畫作來自其《Places of Hong Kong》眾多插畫中關於元朗的描繪。

《許敬雅的香港》中的插畫建立了一個範本。這座城市中展現的視覺對比和矛盾讓許敬雅陶醉：街上一位穿戴著客家帽和圍裙的掃街老婦，旁邊是一位穿著迷你裙、戴著荷葉邊夏帽的年輕女子。這是香港的典型場景，貧與富、老與少、雅致與Hello Kitty式可愛並置，在如今的城市街頭依然可見。許敬雅與眾多藝術家、攝影師和電影製作人一起，捕捉下這座城市的快節奏和諷刺之處，將它們轉化成電影裡的嘲諷或幽默以及攝影、漫畫、插圖或廣告。

隨著時間推移，許敬雅的自由工作範疇慢慢擴大，從政府部門退休後尤為如此。他成了藝術家、設計師、藝術總監、漫畫家、插畫家、歷史學家、收藏家，有時還充當經銷商，買賣殖民時期的物品（多為在亞洲的英國貨），尤其是明信片和照片。日積月累，許敬雅成了一名關注香港歷史和殖民通商口岸，特別是上海、中國沿海及內陸河流的歷史記錄者。他受聘為雜誌、企業客戶和歷史學會撰寫歷史掌故和奇聞異事——這項工作佔據了他越來越多的興趣和時間，超過了他那純粹的藝術工作。但這些研究會被巧妙的改用於許敬雅不定期的個人刊物中，用簡單的文字和插畫解說香港和它的歷史，例如：

亞伯丁
亞伯丁勳爵是一位不太知名的英國首相，曾言辭卓絕的反對《教會頭銜法案》。

許敬雅用一幅簡潔的歐洲紳士（推測是亞伯丁本人）線條畫來描述這件無關緊要的小事，畫中人物的頭髮和襯衫高領荷葉邊帶著花體。文字和肖像都較為平常，而層層褶邊的背景卻極為突出，看起來就像蛋糕一樣； 仔細辨別後發現，那是以華麗花飾呈現的香港仔標誌性水上餐廳珍寶海鮮舫。模糊的歷史肖像、晦澀的文字和當代愚蠢的水上餐廳，這三個幾乎沒有關聯的元素之所以能奏效，是因為哈克抓住了觀眾對荒謬的覺察力。秉承慣用的諷刺手法，他承認標題《香港酒吧女孩的進步》採用了英國著名畫家和社會諷刺作家威廉·荷加斯的「進步」，目的是用以詼諧觀察香港酒吧風格的變化。

許敬雅的精神依舊纏繞著香港外國記者會。他逢星期五下午抵達，坐在主吧台他最喜歡的位置上。然後將凳子來回挪動幾釐米好讓視線與一根柱子對齊，這樣他就不會看到酒吧角落的電視裡可能會播放的討厭垃圾（他會特別拉長母音說：「電…視」）。他待在吧台那不動，享受著友情和戲謔，看著在記者吧台一端（通常對著律師的吧台）聚集著的香港記者、各種外地客和靠打關係佔便宜的人，和他們一同說笑、爭論，回顧過去的一周。他會在其於香港記者會《Correspndent》雜誌中的漫畫專欄《夜間動物園》記錄酒吧裡的騷動和狂歡。

在酒吧的另一角落放著許敬雅最著名的創作「垃圾蟲」的原始模型，一個像龍的反垃圾小壞蛋。一塊蝕刻著盛開紋章花卉的玻璃將主酒吧和一間叫做The Bunker的較小較安靜的空間阻隔開，那是許敬雅為外國記者會設計的會徽。而置於記者會前門的一塊帶有此著名會徽的牌匾則愈發凸顯了它的重要性。這塊牌匾是40年前用於紀念香港外國記者會在下亞厘畢道原牛奶公司大樓冷藏倉庫會址的開幕。當時由時任住港督尤德爵士揭開牌匾，他住在上亞厘畢道的港督府。許敬雅用他的詼諧文字和藝術之手潤飾了許多的香港歷史事件，而這僅是其中之一。