Chapter 2 - Images

Authors note: As Irina and Soltek visit an arts exhibition this will be going slightly into history of art and how Vulcan and humans have different viewpoints of the purpose of art. Be patient it will get more interesting when they enter the expressionistic section...

After another exhausting day of work on the program Irina definitely looked forward to have some distraction. They have to present the current state of their work in three days in front of the whole holographic team and she was feeling very nervous about it. She didn't want to make a bad first impression and be assigned to filing astrometric sensor data for the rest of her life. For once in her life she was glad she was working with a Vulcan, because Soltek didn't seem to be affected by the news of their scheduled presentation. If he had noticed her nervousness at all he at least didn't comment on it like Katok and some of her former Vulcan colleagues had. From questions on why she had those 'unproductive emotions' to analysis on her human nature and advice on how to control herself with meditation – she had gotten it all and could have written a book about Vulcan logic on that kind of advice alone.

She had loosened up a little when a Lt. Barclay suddenly dropped in to look at their progress and she decided that something about these holo programming types was quite unique and indescribable. He was the most nervous and scatterbrained specimen wearing a gold Starfleet uniform she had ever seen, but judging the actual contents of his erratic babbling he must be a programming genius.

When she approached the entrance of the exhibition Soltek was already standing there. He was still in his yellow engineering uniform, while she had quickly slipped into a pair of olive leisure trousers, a gray-blue shirt and a beige-brown jacket after work. The shirt and the jewelry matched her gray-blue eyes and she had loosened up her shoulder-long blond hair.

'Hi!' she said.

'Good evening, Lt.,' he answered and they both walked in.

At first they walked through a series of portraits, landscapes and a few still lifes mostly in oil. Irina adored the old masters for their detail, but she could never muster up the patience to work weeks or even months just on one painting. She knew she would also get bored looking at them after a while, but they were still beautiful and very skillfully done. She painted herself, but loved to play with color and shapes, used it mostly to get her mind off things.

Soltek studied the paintings of the old masters with genuine interest. 'There are many similarities to art from my home world,' he said sounding astonished, 'the display of the details, the perspective, the coloring is very accurate and some of the pictures have a meditative effect although the religious content in some of them is most illogical.'

At that she grinned, 'so Vulcans paint as meditation?'

'Yes,' he answered, 'painting is a method to perceive order inside the chaos of the natural world. Especially in still lifes and landscapes like these the goal is to align diverse objects around a focal point in a harmonious composition even though many natural and all day life objects seem at the surface to occur randomly and asymmetric. To the deeper observer looking through the eyes of logic there is order everywhere even in an unkempt garden or a half-eaten meal on a table.'

'Oh,' she said.

'Can you clarify your expression?' he asked.

'Well, I'm no expert on old masters,' she answered frowning, 'but I doubt many human artists see art as a pursue of logic and order...but I believe buddhistic art has meditative purpose.'

'Fascinating,' he said, 'human culture seems to be very diverse. What other purposes are there to art than meditation for humans?'

'Well,' she answered, 'of course in times before photography people also painted as a means to enhance the atmosphere of a room with a beautiful painting of a landscape or something, they also often commissioned portraits as a memory of a loved person.'

'Ah,' he said, 'obvious emotional purposes. Did the attitude of your people change after they invented photography and were able to take more accurate pictures of landscapes and people?'

'No, many people still display painted portraits and landscapes in their homes because they find them more beautiful or interesting than photographs', she said.

'There's no logic in preferring a beautiful illusion to accurate reality,' Soltek said nearly indignantly, 'but you have given me an enlightening insight into the human mind, Lt. Now I better understand a discussion I had with Lt. Barclay today,' he answered sounding like he was thinking hard.

Irina laughed, 'did he tell you that the holographic interface in the right corner is ugly?'

'No, he suggested to program an interactive holographic runabout to simulate a flight through the beta quadrant in order to display the cartographic data,' he answered.

'That's an excellent idea!' she said, 'I've always found it weird to just stand in the middle of space while looking at the star systems and data. It makes me feel slightly nauseous, like I'm floating outside in the vacuum of space without an environmental suit.'

'If you were in vacuum without an environmental suit you wouldn't feel nauseous, your body would explode from osmotic pressure in 0.365 seconds,' he said.

'Thanks, I get the picture,' she answered and started to walk on and point towards the next section, 'oh, look, there's the romantic section...wow, that's an original by Caspar David Friedrich!'

'If that is a portrait of a 'loved' person it is very inefficient...or is the perspective on his back an indication of the relationship he has to the commissioner of the painting?' he asked confused while observing the painting.

At that Irina laughed out loud, she nearly thew a fit and had to hold onto his shoulder to steady herself.

He looked at her startled by her outburst. 'If I interpret your emotional reaction correctly, I have just said something humorous. It was not my intention to disrupt your emotional equilibrium.'

'It's okay, you're a great entertainer, Lt. Soltek, I haven't laughed like that for a while,' she smiled at him and drew deep breaths to calm down, while he raised an eyebrow.

'Are you ready to explain this painting to me, this is most puzzling,' he asked politely.

'This is one of his most famous paintings, Caspar David Friedrich was an artist of the romantic era, erm...this will take some longer explaining, but the purpose of painting for this artist comes down to expressing feelings through landscapes and the postures of people and especially his use of light and shadow, see the contrasts between the dark rock, his black clothing and the white mist and clouds?'

'Yes, but the composition is most logical, I don't see how this expresses emotions...?' he asked frowning, 'you said he is an artist of the romantic area...what exactly does romantic mean, is this about human relationships?'

'In this painting not really, this expresses something I believe they called Weltschmerz. Some people of this period had a lot of high ideals, but found living in their society difficult and they kinda longed for a better way of living, for less superficiality in all-day business, more sensitivity and a deeper meaning of life. This guy here is a wanderer which symbolizes the romantic search for deeper meaning and he is looking at the world from above because he can't stand the shallowness in his society,' she explained.

'Most intriguing,' he answered, 'it seems some of your artists are on the pursuit of a higher truth, perhaps even of logic, although they might draw some illogical conclusions on the way.'

She considered him for a moment, 'hmm...yeah, somehow I can see a Vulcan up there on the mountain like this guy...but you know, Weltschmerz also has an emotional component, it means something like feeling depressed and lonely, desperately longing for greater fulfillment.'

'Thanks for explaining,' he said, 'that is of course most unlike the Vulcan pursuit of logic...but still I appreciate the realization of your people that their all-day worries and businesses are shallow without a deeper purpose, this is quite a philosophical accomplishment, I can see now why Vulcan explorers have chosen to cooperate with humans.'

'Thanks for the compliment,' she said not knowing if she should really accept this as a compliment, somehow he was just seeing everything through his Vulcan filter.

Soltek seemed to be genuinely intrigued by the romantic era, especially by Caspar David Friedrich, although he made another comment about illogicality on a painting which depicted the ruins of a monastery in a different landscape than the ruins were originally. It was interesting to watch his face while he studied the painting. Irina wondered if he could sometimes grasp a tiny flash of emotion while immersing himself in those ancient paintings. Some of them were pretty intense, very sad barren winter landscapes, displaying darkness and death, some were mystical, some full of longing for something far far away. But often, just when she thought to see a flicker of sadness or longing in his eyes while he intently studied a painting he curiously asked about the meaning of the colors, objects, postures and perspectives making it sound like he wanted to understand art by using a dictionary.

However, the interesting part of the evening came when they entered the section with the expressionists. He seemed torn between being nearly shocked and fascinated. He constantly stated how illogical their use of coloring was, how disturbing the composition and that he didn't understand the purpose and meaning of those paintings at all. He seemed to be more acceptive to purely abstract art though, saying they were 'interesting though most bizarre experiments in the pursuit of order in the middle of chaos'. How colorful geometric shapes were supposed to express feelings was beyond his comprehension though.

But the most interesting part of the evening came when they viewed expressionistic nude paintings. He grew suddenly very silent, he kinda looked at the painting and then quickly looked away, obviously embarrassed. Irina bit painfully on her lip to not giggle out loud at his reaction and embarrass him even more. She didn't know Vulcans were such prudes, it seemed illogical to her and the paintings were far from obscene, just a nude woman sitting on a chair or lying in a field of flowers, that sort of painting.

'Nude painting is really difficult actually,' she explained to stop the awkward silence. 'It's not easy to get the tiny details right, the various skin tones mingling with light and shadow. Realistic anatomy is also really difficult. Most arts teachers teach people to start with painting the body in defined geometric shapes and then smooth the edges and let the painting grow rounder.'

'What is the purpose of painting these kind of pictures,' he said in an insecure tone, obviously wondering if it was okay to ask that question or maybe he wasn't sure he really wanted to hear the answer.

'There are different purposes', she said, 'some are just studies of the human body, what different body postures can express, feelings and characters of the people portrayed, for example it can display the beauty and strength or the fragility of the human body, it can display introversion or an extroverted personality. A nude painting doesn't necessarily have an erotic focus, but some of them have of course.'

He seemed to relax slightly after that explanation, but Irina realized that his cheeks and ears were much greener than usual. She couldn't wait to tell Lamira that she had seen a Vulcan actually blush from walking through an arts exhibition. Maybe they were not as dispassionate as they want everyone to think. She should have done something like that with her Vulcan colleagues on the Asteria, might have been much more fun...although she doubted ole Katok would be impressed by anything – but that young fellow was another page in the book about Vulcans entirely.

There was more reason for embarrassment when they saw nude paintings in the section of the 'first contact era'. Obviously human artists have been fascinated about alien anatomy. This was no surprise to Irina, but she could tell Soltek was kinda weirded out by it (or that was at last what his reaction looked to her). There were also a couple of paintings of Vulcans, but Irina was very grateful that they weren't nude. She suspected very much that the artists had been willing, but haven't found any Vulcan volunteers to pose for them. Most paintings of Vulcans seemed to focus on the elegant pointed ears or on Vulcan postures of meditative serenity. Especially the latter seemed to earn Soltek's appreciation.

'What does this painting express?' he asked looking at a painting which featured a Vulcan man meditatively sitting in the desert.

'I guess the artist was fascinated by your culture and wanted to capture the meditative atmosphere,' she said.

He raised an eyebrow, 'for what purpose?'

'Maybe he liked it, the painting looks calm and soothing, humans don't want to be emotional all the time, a lot of humans meditate too' she said.

'Fascinating,' he replied.

He seemed to be more in his element when they came to a section with holographic art, but while he was interested in the details of programming he frowned on the artistic content as much as he had in the other sections. The only non-scientific content which got his blessing was a meditation program and a puzzle, but he didn't seem to fathom the originality of artwork they contained, for him it was only the purpose and efficient programming that mattered.

But when Irina finally said goodbye and walked towards her quarters she felt really great, it had been a fun evening! The guy was a logical menace alright, but he wasn't as arrogant as some other Vulcans and almost cute in some funny innocent way.

When Soltek walked towards his quarters he made a mental list on what he should meditate before going to sleep. It was quite a long list, but that is to be expected when he was finally exploring other cultures and the learning experiences have been really worth it.

He realized as he was mentally revisiting the events of the evening that it hadn't just been the contents of these audaciously illogical human paintings which were slightly disrupting his mental equilibrium, this emotionally expressive Lt. had also contributed. When she had leaned on his shoulder with her hand in her fit of laughter he had experienced a peculiar tingling sensation.

Authors note: There will be more chapters, so watch out for them!

BTW, has anyone guessed which paintings from Caspar David Friedrich they were viewing?