By Tim Sanders

The other day I was in an examining room at Baptist Health Center, waiting for Dr. Nelson. I was doing what most people do in those little rooms when the door is shut and nobody is around. I was examining a tongue depressor to see if I could shoot paper clips with it, examining the feasibility of putting a blood pressure cuff around my head, and examining the wall very carefully with that little flashlight thing with the nozzle on the end that doctors use to look into your ears. Hey, it is an examining room, after all.

I soon tired of these scientific pursuits, and took to examining a framed picture hanging on the wall. It was a print depicting Damian and Cosmas, the patron saints of pharmacy and medicine. In the Third Century AD, Damian was an Arabian apothecary, and his twin brother, Cosmas was a dromedary. No, actually Cosmas was a physician. Damian was crushing something with a pestle in a little Arabian mortar, while Cosmas was peering intently into an old man’s ear, trying to determine just how much of his brother’s concoction would fit in there, and whether or not it would help them dislodge that crayon. According to the caption under the picture, both brothers were Christians, and had themselves martyred in hopes of becoming saints. It worked.

Something about that print looked familiar. Oh sure, you’re saying, I’d probably been in that examining room before and noticed it. Well, that’s true, but something about the style reminded me of an artist named Robert Thom. The style reminded me of Thom, and also the fact that the print bore his name across the top in large letters. "Hey, I know that Thom guy," I said to the jar of tongue depressors.

Actually I never met Robert Thom, but I was familiar with his paintings, because he was also a Michigan native. When I was a student at Oakland University in Rochester, the Kresge Library there exhibited a series of paintings he’d done for Michigan Bell Telephone Company depicting important events in that state’s history. If memory serves, there were momentous historical scenes like the momentous Father Marquette striding proudly into the historical city of Sault Ste. Marie, the momentous Antoine Coupe de Ville Cadillac striding proudly into historical Fort Detroit, and the momentous Stevie Wonder striding proudly into the wall at Berry Gordy’s historical Motown office. My recollections may be a bit fuzzy, but I do know that Thom was also commissioned by Parke-Davis Company to do A History of Pharmacy in Pictures, which is the source of that print on Dr. Nelson’s examining room wall.

In the mid-1960s, realistic artists like Thom were not held in high regard by "real artists," especially those who taught college art courses. I was initially an art major at the university, due to the fact that I was an art prodigy when I was a youngster. In my high school art class, I became proficient in the medium of paper-mache-on-chicken wire-frame sculpture. I don’t like to brag, but I did a horse, once, which several people in the class thought was one of the best paper mache horses they’d ever seen. It had started out as a dog, but by the time I’d finished it, everyone agreed it was almost certainly a horse, and even though it didn’t have a mane, I didn’t argue with them. Fine distinctions like that mean nothing to artists. As long as my classmates recognized it as a vertebrate, I was happy. It was that talent which just naturally drew me (no pun intended) to Oakland University’s Art Department. That, and the rumor that in our studio classes we’d get to work with real live nude models.

Sadly, the Art Department was low on funds, so our nude models were three heavy-set ladies from food service and a one-armed custodian named Earl. But before I became discouraged and gave up Art for English Literature, I took an Art History class under a professor who was also a practicing artist. Our dormitory lobby had a couple of his paintings hanging on the wall, and those paintings inspired deep, philosophical discussions among students who were majoring in recreational drugs:

"Oh, wow, man, that painting’s like so cool. It’s intense, like pepperoni pizza, man, only with green crust and blue anchovies. What do you think, Jim?"

"I–URP–think I’m gonna be sick!"

"Bummer!"

When the Robert Thom exhibit appeared at the library, this particular professor took great pains to let his students know that Robert Thom was not really an artist, but only a craftsman.

I had seen the Thom exhibit, and had been impressed by it, but only because I didn’t know any better. Our Art History professor had studied in Paris at the Sorbonne (pronounced sore-BUN ), and he certainly knew better. He also knew that Thom was making a whole lot more money than he was, and he resented it. Artists always resent it when no-talent illustrators make more money than they do. Thom was an illustrator. What the good professor produced, on the other hand, was abstract expressionist art, which back then was all the rage. You couldn’t tell what it was, so it was hard to say if it was done well or not. I guess that was the idea. It was profound and thought-provoking. Maybe anybody with a little time and sweat could produce realistic historical paintings, but not just any old monkey on any old rock could slap paint on a canvas the way an inspired abstract expressionist could. That required a monkey with academic credentials.

I did a little Internet research. That professor is not teaching anymore. Now he lives in a New York City loft and exhibits his work all over the world. His website lets you know just how serious he is about his art, and the deep thought processes behind it. This is an actual quote, which I couldn’t make up if I wanted to:

To take the shifting and changing thoughts, emotions and energies that I experience and give form, not to them for they are unstoppable, but to their gist and space. I want to manifest the brief moments of clarity that are afforded me.

If you can’t make heads or tails out of that, don’t worry. If you’d ever seen any of his paintings, you wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails out of them, either. Apparently he’s making money, though, so maybe he’s no longer so resentful of Thom.

Robert Thom, on the other hand, said this in 1964:

I make no pretense about my work. The technique is clearly illustration. It intends to tell a story and I believe it does.

I admire the late Robert Thom’s modesty, and I admire his historical paintings. They are good, and there’s no mistaking his dogs for horses. You don’t have to stroke your chin and have "meaningful dialogues" about "the gist and space" of old Damian and Cosmas, or Father Marquette, either. I think that is probably because Thom had a whole lot more "moments of clarity" than did most university art faculties.

Clarity is important to us regular guys, even those of us who don’t know how to pronounce "Sorbonne." And I am confident that I speak for both regular patients and also patients suffering from irregularity when I say we certainly wouldn’t want to see any of that abstract art stuff hanging in our doctors’ examining rooms. It’s scary. We wouldn’t appreciate the unstoppable emotional energy of abstract expressionism.

We’d just think the wall was dirty.