李约瑟谈方召麐

　　一九四二年初次到达中国，最使我景仰而印象深刻的就是在这个伟大的国家，人民、文化及其它一切，都是既有古，又有今，古今并存。当时有一所科学实验室设立于古老的庙堂内;又有一间航空零件修理装配厂，安装在广西的岩洞里进行工作。当我第一次到四川灌县的时候，会见好几位水利工程方面的工程师，很可能是英国曼城大学或者美国麻省理工学院的毕业生。

　　与其他同胞一样，他们穿着中国蓝布长褂，袋内携带着计算尺;许多年后，我穿着长衫，坐在剑桥大学坚氏学院内，让人给我画像，我也备带着一管计算尺子。

　　在我心目中，方召麐的绘画也是从古代到现代的延续。她从中国传统艺术中蜕变开创她的新道路，是传统与创新的混合体。几千年来中国文化就是这样继续不断地发展，以迄于今。方召麐沿着中国传统道路，不离根本地探索创新，画出了有自己风格，有时代气息，而且是大有气魄的雄伟作品。

　　本人既不是研究艺术史的人，更不是艺术评论家，多年的友谊，真诚欣赏重视方召麐这个人，促使我写成这段文字，以为序。

　　李约瑟于剑桥

　　左起：李约瑟、方召麐、鲁桂珍、吴作人、周尔鎏

　　When I went to China first in 1942, one of the aspects of that wonderful land, culture and people, that most impressed me was the mixture of the old and the new. One would find a statistics laboratory installed in an old temple hall, or a whole aeroplane repair shop in the interior of one of those karst limestone pinnacles  ("sugar-loaf mountains") in Guangxi. When I went toGuanxian  in   Sichuan for the first time, I met many of the hydraulic engineers. They might well have been trained at Manchester or M.I.T., but they were still wearing the long blue gowns that everybody else wore, and the slide rules stuck out of their pockets. That was why, many years later, I sat for my portrait at Caius College, Cambridge, wearing a long blue chang-kua, and with a slide rule too.

　　Fang Chaoling's   paintings have always seemed to me the incarnation of a mixture of the old and the new, the traditional and the experimental, which has been going on in China for a whole millennium or more. She follows, up to a point, the classical models, but always in an entirely new style, adapting them with great strength and power to the ethos of the present day. I am far from being an art historian or an art critic, yet personal friendship, as well as genuine appreciation, obliges me to offer these few lines for Fang Chaoling's  book.

　　Joseph Needham

　　Cambridge