Showing 1 - 10 of 12 annotations contributed by Lam, MD, Gretl

Rx/Museum: 52 Essays on Art and Reflection in Medicine

Levy, Aaron; Hoy, Lyndsay

Last Updated: Sep-12-2022
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Collection (Essays)

Summary:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of curators and clinicians from the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Slought Foundation, and Penn Medicine started the Rx/Museum project with the goal of creating an online medical humanities experience to support healthcare providers. The project championed the role of art in the training and wellbeing of clinicians, and aimed to foster connection, reflection, and humanistic learning during a time of immense trauma and isolation. Rx/Museum began as a series of essays that were originally emailed on a weekly basis from July 2020 to June 2021. These 52 essays were later published together in a book.

The Rx/Museum book features a foreword and afterword by the editors describing the philosophy of the project and explaining the importance of art in medical education, along with the 52 essays published in chronological order. Each essay focuses on an individual artwork including paintings, photographs, and film stills. The essays are structured in a uniform manner, starting with a thematic quote, followed by a description of the artwork that provides an historical context and highlights visual features, then a print of the artwork, and finally a series of reflections which connect the artwork with issues in healthcare.

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Tree, Broken Tree

Mortimer, Dylan

Last Updated: Feb-03-2020
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Visual Arts

Genre: Multimedia

Summary:

A tree, colored in pink glitter and outlined in red, stands alone. Two of the main branches are cleaved apart, and green glitter oozes from the wound. This does not look like normal tree sap; the yellow-green color is purulent, and the glitter gives it a toxic glowing effect. Two of the three branches droop weakly towards the ground.  The tree is sickly, possibly dying.  

Because the tree is mounted on a white background, with the tips of branches curling lightly off the panel, the piece also recalls a scientific specimen mounted on display. Those who are familiar with lung anatomy will note how the tree trunk recalls the trachea, and the branches recall bronchi. The pink and red coloring reinforces the idea that this isn’t merely a tree, but also lung tissue.

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See You On the Other Side

Wong, Matthew

Last Updated: Nov-04-2019
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A tiny figure sits alone, looking back at a building in the distance. The building looks like a one-story home, the rudimentary kind you learn to draw in kindergarten, with a triangle roof and a blocky rectangular body, embedded with smaller rectangles to signify the door and windows. The figure in the foreground and the house in the background are the same size, and this scale emphasizes the depth of the landscape – the figure and the house are separated by a vast white space. And yet they are clearly connected, not only because the house is centered in the figure’s line of vision, but also because they share the same teal colors.  

The house sits at the foot of a spring-green mountain, painted over with long cascading strokes of darker green, giving the impression of a verdant and peaceful setting. Contrast this to the brown ridge where the figure is sitting, huddled in a long sleeve jacket, hands tucked into pockets. The ridge is barren except for a single tree that is mostly bare branches with sparse pale-pink leaves.

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Xanax Rainbow

Reemtsen, Kelly

Last Updated: May-23-2017
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Sculpture

Genre: Sculpture

Summary:

Five larger-than-life pills are presented in a clean white frame. They are precisely arranged in a vertical column to form a pastel rainbow. Each pill is a different color – white, pink, green, blue, and purple – and the word “Xanax” is prominently printed into each in capital letters. The mirrored background reflects the pills and the frame, just as it reflects the viewer’s face.

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Little Angel

Sesow, Matt

Last Updated: Jun-28-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

Two harshly drawn figures make up this painting, an adult cradling a baby. Both figures stare out and confront the viewer with round bulging eyes. Their wide red mouths are drawn into grimaces, displaying long rows of teeth. Their bodies are pale, but are outlined roughly in black, and marked by gashes of blue, pink, and red. They stand, highlighted in yellow, against an angry and energetic backdrop of red and orange.  

A small black halo sticks out stiffly from the head of the baby, while two sharp black horns protrude from the crown of the adult. The adult’s disproportionately large thick hand presses the baby close to their body. Is this an adult or is it a monster or a devil? The viewer is left to decide. Whoever or whatever the figure is, it holds the baby in a way that is protective and menacing at the same time.

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S.O.S. Starification Object Series

Wilke, Hannah

Last Updated: Jun-06-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Photography

Genre: Photography

Summary:

In this series of black-and-white photographs, Hannah Wilke poses half-naked for the camera, mimicking the postures of female celebrities and models in magazines and advertisements. She is mockingly flirtatious in some images, playfully wearing a man’s tie, tousling her hair, smiling suggestively with her lips parted. In other images, her expression is cold and distant, as the viewer gazes at the sensuous curves of her neck, back, and breasts.

But there is more. Wilke has also stuck tiny chewing gum sculptures of vulvas to her body. These sculptures simultaneously confront and repel the viewer. The vulvas explicitly confront the viewer about their sexual thoughts and desires as they view photographs of a woman’s body. And the vulvas sprout from her face, back, and chest like warty or diseased growths, and causing the viewer to step back in revulsion, thus breaking their lascivious gaze.

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Cauda Equina

Lehrer, Riva

Last Updated: May-05-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A woman stands nude with her back to the viewer. Her arms are raised, hands interlaced behind her neck. Her back is deformed and scarred, but her body, depicted in warm flesh tones, looks solid and capable. She stands uncomfortably but patiently, as if she is waiting for a medical exam in a doctor’s office, or as if she is inviting the audience to look and learn.  

A skeleton is superimposed anatomically over the lower half of the woman’s body, including her lower spine, pelvis, and femurs. A round form surrounds the lower spine which looks abnormal. In the blue background is a skeleton of a horse. The horse is angled away from the audience, such that we see its rear and tail most prominently. But its head is turned to look backwards, so that its empty eye sockets appear to be peering at the woman and at the audience.  

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Sheri / Dragon

Lehrer, Riva

Last Updated: May-05-2016
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Drawing

Summary:

A woman drawn in charcoal crouches tensely on all fours, arms wide as if proudly claiming territory, but with one hand raised in hesitation. Her legs are strong, and her breasts are exposed animalistically. But the viewer’s eyes are drawn to her face, which looks sad and weary.

A green dragon is super-imposed onto the body of the woman. It glares at the audience, snarling toothily with a red open mouth. Its head is raised proudly, and its wings are spread defiantly. It is ready to attack. But the dragon looks partly mechanical, and it fits onto the woman like a costume, with her head, chest, arms, and legs exposed. It is armor that simultaneously protects yet burdens her.

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El Deafo

Bell, Cece

Last Updated: Nov-30-2015
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Graphic Memoir

Summary:

El Deafo is a graphic novel and memoir describing the author’s childhood experiences after she loses her hearing from meningitis at age 4. During her first year in school, she attends a special class with other students who also wear hearing aids. They have fun and learn how to lip read together. However, Cece’s family moves to a new neighborhood the following year, and she is forced to attend regular classes at a new school. In order to understand her teachers, she gets a powerful new hearing aid known as the Phonic Ear, which is a large device she must wear strapped to her chest. The Ear makes her feel more self conscious than ever. She struggles to fit in and make friends at school, and often feels very lonely. However, she discovers that the Phonic Ear also gives her a “superpower” – she can hear what her teacher is saying and doing around the school, even when they are not in the same room together! To cheer herself up, she pretends she is a superhero named El Deafo with super-hearing. Even better, her newly realized powers soon make her the popular kid at school because she can warn everyone to quit goofing off when the teacher is coming.

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The Bad Doctor

Williams, Ian

Last Updated: Jul-13-2015
Annotated by:
Lam, MD, Gretl

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Graphic Novel

Summary:

The Bad Doctor is a graphic novel describing the daily life of Dr. Iwan James, a general practitioner in a small Welsh town. At the time of the story, Dr. James is an established, middle-aged physician, with a wife and two grown sons. Initially it appears that despite his outward success, Dr. James is simply dissatisfied with his life and career – with his early marriage, with his overbearing colleague, and with his patients, who come to him with all sorts of ailments, from silly to tragic to creepy. However, the readers learn that Dr. James is also struggling mentally with himself. Through flashbacks to his childhood and his medical school years, and through his clinical interactions with a patient suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, it is revealed that Dr. James has also wrestled with this disorder since childhood. In between composedly caring for all of his patients, releasing his frustrations on long bike rides through the Welsh hills, and sharing his concerns with friends, he learns to understand his compulsions and confront his own sense of inadequacy.

The author, Dr. Ian Williams, has in fact worked in a rural general practice in Wales. Although this novel is a work of fiction, and “any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental” (pg. 2), the story is naturally and richly informed by his personal experiences.

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