Art, Mindfulness, and Medical Practice: Wu Zhen’s The Fisherman
As a fine art photographer and a physician, I believe that visual art is a portal through which we can find powerful connections between ourselves and people from all walks of life.
For physicians and others in healthcare, art can provide a framework that offers the potential to build understanding and create greater trust. By spending time with a work of art, we’re able to explore what the world might mean to somebody completely different from us.
Art is also a way to access mindfulness in a way that feels meaningful and relatable. It only takes a few minutes of focused attention to gain a greater and more subtly shaded experience.
Think of the way that you listen to music. It may be simply background noise, other times entertainment, but there are times that the experience offer a gateway to new ideas, or a way to connect the dots that have been accumulating in your subconscious mind.
In a previous article, I shared the very contemporary insights and connections that we can access by spending time with Vermeer’s The Geographer, painted in the 1600s. In this article, I’ll explore an even older work of art: Wu Zhen’s The Fisherman.
Wu Zhen, The Fisherman (attribution: Wu Zhen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Wu Zhen painted in the 14th century. In his lifetime, he was not really acknowledged or recognized as being an important artist. But about a hundred years later, he was identified as one of the four Great Masters of the Yuan. As a result, his work became a real point of reference for many subsequent artists, and that continues to this day.
When Wu Zhen was painting, his country was in chaos as a result of the Mongol takeover. Despite (or perhaps because of) this turmoil, there was tremendous cultural growth. At the time, there was a very powerful, industrious scholar class that was highly visible in public life. For the middle class, that was a realm of life to aspire to.
But there was also an idealized life of a simpler and more rural lifestyle. Although Wu Zhen was educated and could well have lived comfortably as a scholar, he chose to take his life in a slower direction, away from the turmoil and conflict that was part of life in the city.
Through his work, he sought to capture and distill the essence of his subject with line, shade, and pattern. Many of his works, like this one, included a poem written in calligraphy, which is translated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as:
Red leaves west of the village reflect evening rays,
Yellow reeds on a sandy bank cast early moon shadows.
Lightly stirring his oar,
Thinking of returning home,
He puts aside his fishing pole, and will catch
no more.
So he lived this very simple rural lifestyle, yet was a man of great intellect.
At the same time, in the cities, other Chinese artists were creating more literal portraiture. But it was understood that there was a difference between this more factual based way of working versus the more ethereal and intellectual work of somebody like Wu Zhen.
In our contemporary age, such a longing for simplicity or austerity may be interpreted as a sign of a less sophisticated or uneducated mind. Yet these preconceptions can be misleading. Wu Zhen’s work is a reminder that in accepting such a one-dimensional stereotype, we may overlook the richness and depth of an individual. And we are all the worse for the loss.
How can you transfer the experience of art to the practice of medicine? Consider what happens when you meet a patient or somebody in your everyday life. With the brief time allotted for the encounter, you might only be given the outlines of that person, almost like a quick sketch.
Perhaps if you’re open to this richer way of seeing, you will take a few moments to appreciate those outlines, and to notice that more often than not, they do not fit into a simple template. In doing so you might be able to discern more layers than you first realized. Perhaps it’s the choice of clothing, the way they carry themselves, the book they hold in their hand. And as a result, your questions may become more nuanced and your listening more focused.
Think about this way of relating as creating sort of a bridge between you and the other person. You might be able to find a connection or trace a thread of a clue in the same way as you might experience a work of art.
An earlier version of this article appeared on this website in April 2023.
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