This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Hold yourself accountable
I’ve looked at this painting a thousand times. I use it in my classes. I’ve seen it in art museums when it’s been on view. And there are so many subtleties, but one of the assumptions that I made, not as an art historian, but just a viewer of art, is that what I was looking at on the plate was a piece of meat. Like a piece of ham with an eye in the center. And when I first showed it in one of my classes, I said, “Okay, who’s going to tell me what they see?” And someone raised his hand and said, “That’s a big old pancake on the plate.” And I would have never considered that it was a pancake. Is it a material distinction? Maybe. Maybe not. But he was so sure that it was a pancake. And I was so sure that it was a piece of meat. While it might seem like a really subtle distinction, it’s not.
If you think about something like eye witness testimony, well, he was wearing a red sweater. No, he was wearing a blue sweater. That’s a big difference. And one of the things that reminded me of the Magritte painting, there was a crime scene in Texas and they were speaking to a witness and they said, “What did he look like? What did the suspect look like?” And the witness said, “He had a cowboy hat on.” And in Texas, lots of people wear 10 gallon hats. So they were looking for a suspect with a cowboy hat on. Well, it turns out the suspect was wearing a Dallas Cowboys cap. So the choice of words, it wasn’t a cowboy hat, it was a Dallas Cowboys hat. The idea of saying what you see and being sure about what you say, that’s how communication lines can get crossed.
We all see things differently and we’re accountable for our observations, but we also all prioritize differently. And we are accountable for how we prioritize information. When you say that something is urgent, that means right now immediately, it needs your attention this minute. When you say something’s important, it may be no less critical than urgent, but the time factor is different. You might have a week to address this issue that’s equally important. Urgent means right now. The choice of urgent, critical and important, that’s all part of the analysis and the breakdown. And the word choice in conjunction with stepping back from your assumptions, I think can help you negotiate the analysis part.
And another interesting thing about that Magritte painting that I found fascinating, I received an email from a woman who said, “Has anyone ever told you when they look at that painting and describe it to you, that the fork to the right of the plate is turned upside down and the tines are facing into the table?” I had never noticed that. Looked at the painting a thousand times. And again, material difference? No. Critical? No. Important? Yes. It’s one of those details. Because if someone said to me, describe the silverware in the painting, I would have said you have a knife and a fork. And sometimes it’s those very small details of the tines facing the table that can bring a whole case together or a crack a case, or be that one detail that brings all the other pieces together.
Consider the pertinent negative
This is an interesting painting, and I want you to just take a look at it for a few seconds before we talk about it. What I asked the people in The Art of Perception to do, one of them is looking down at a piece of paper and the other one is looking at the painting and then they have one minute to describe what it is that they see to their partner. And the partner has to sketch what they hear. And it’s not about the artwork. It’s not about how well you draw. It’s how well can you describe a new set of unfamiliar data? How well do you listen? And how well do you take that articulation and transfer it to your own language?
So when we’re looking at this painting, well, you can try it. You can say, “Okay, what is it that I see?” Well, how many of you said there was a train coming out of a fireplace? And everyone raises his or her hands. And how many of you referenced smoke or steam in your discussion? Lots of hands go up. And then I asked the question, “Who articulated that there are no tracks under the train?” And a few astute people actually raise their hand and said, “No. I said there were no tracks under the train.” And then I ask, “Who noticed, and then articulated that there was no fire in the fireplace?” And hands go up, not too many.
And then we talk about other aspects of the painting. How many people mentioned the wood grain on the floor. Most people noticed the wood grain on the floor. How many people mentioned wainscoting, that kind of paneling on the walls. And I always have some decorative arts aficionados. “Oh, yes. I know about wainscoting.” And then I say, “How many of you mentioned a mantle on the fireplace?” Lots of hands go up. Who mentioned candlesticks? Lots of hands go up. And then I ask how many of you said there were no candles in the candlesticks and people say, “Oh, no. Never got there.” And then I ask, “Okay, what really observant nerd said, it’s 12:42 or 08:05 on the clock. Who got to mention the time?”
And the reason I have that line of questioning, is because this painting illustrates a really very important concept that I transferred from emergency medicine to a much broader application. And the idea is called the pertinent negative. It’s saying what isn’t there, in addition to what is there to actually give a more accurate picture of what you’re looking at. When you say, “I see a train coming out of a fireplace and by the way, there are no tracks under the train. And there is no fire in the fireplace.” Why would you attempt to say what’s not there? Because in my third grade mind, if you told me to draw a fireplace, I would draw two sticks and a fire and smoke in the fireplace, unless you told me not to. And if you told me to draw a pair of candlesticks, I’ll draw candles with flames, unless you tell me not to. The pertinent negative is this wonderful concept that gives us a broader way of looking at something. Instead of looking at something like this, you look at it like this.
The pertinent negative in a medical situation is when someone comes into the emergency room and it appears to the physician, they have all the symptoms of pneumonia. Pneumonia has three symptoms. Symptom one is present. Symptom two is present, but if symptom three is absent, it’s the pertinent negative. You have to say, “Symptom three is not there. Therefore it’s not pneumonia.” In the real world, outside of medicine, how can we use this? If we have an expectation of someone’s behavior, you expect them to behave a certain way, and then they don’t, you need to say it didn’t happen. You’re evaluating someone on the job. Well, you did A, B and C very well, but you didn’t do D, E and F. It’s looking at the affirmative and looking at the negative and the pertinent negative is a wonderful tool. This Magritte painting gives us this great opportunity to talk about not just what we see, but what we don’t see, to give the person who can’t see what we see a much more accurate description of what they’re looking at.