First Works

WikiPaintings allows visitors to view all works by a given artist in chronological order.  The Salvador Dalí "collection" includes paintings dating from 1910, when the artist was 6 years old.  Moving forward in time, Dalí's predecessors show their faces one after another.  This leads to the invention of a game: begin at the beginning and move forward until you come across a work in which you can perceive nothing but the artist's own style.  Call this the First Work.

Salvador Dalí, The Station at Figueras, 1926, age 22

(The shadows, the shadowy figures, the desolate landscape of unexplained shapes, the trees obviously preparing for The Persistence of Memory.  If, in the application of paint, there is not yet Dalí, neither is there anyone else in particular [so far as is evident from the picture].)

Of course, there can be no winning this game.  Disputation can only lead further discovery.  If you, readers, decide to play this game, comment here with your findings.  I will perhaps post them, and more of my own, in future posts.

Another suggestion:

René Magritte, Nocturne, 1925, age 27

The Faces of Alexei Korzukhin

Alexei Korzukhin, Russian realist painter, 1835–1894. Wikipedia styles his portraits as "generally accepted as masterpieces of Russian portrait painting." Some highlights from a timeline on rusartnet:

• Born to a family of gold panners at Uktussky Zavod near Ekaterinburg (1835).
• One of the rebellious fourteen students who refused to paint the set topic in the competition for a major gold medal and resigned from the Imperial Academy of Arts with the title of second-class artist (1863).

[It isn't clear what the "set topic" was, but it seems the group was protesting the strict guidelines and divisions between high and low art that the Imperial Academy endorsed. They wanted to make art more accessible to the masses, and after leaving the Imperial Academy of Arts founded a collective called the Peredvizhniki, or The Wanderers, which later became the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions. Evidently Korzukhin was a member of the society but did not participate in the exhibitions. More here, and, of course, here.]

• Suffered from nervous shock and poor health after witnessing the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on the Ekaterinburg Canal in St Petersburg (1881).

Master of portraiture thought Korzukhin may be, the extent of his mastery is more clearly evident in his portrayal of faces in action. Examples below, with details. Click on the full paintings for large versions.

Separation, 1872

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Before Confession, 1877

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Peasant Girls in a Forest, 1878

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In a Monastic Hotel, 1882

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The Sunday, 1884

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There Goes Petrushka, 1888

Fragments II: Symbol

Anima Sola

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blood flight by Jenny Hval

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[The Parnassians] still treat their subjects as the old philosophers and orators did: that is, present things directly, whereas I think that they should be presented allusively. Poetry lies in the contemplation of tings, in the image emanating from the reveries which things arouse in us. They take something in its entirety and simply exhibit it; in so doing, they fall short of mystery; they fail to give our minds that exquisite joy which consists in believing that we are creating something. To name an object is largely to destroy poetic enjoyment, which comes from gradual divination. The ideal is to suggest the object. It is the perfect use of this mystery which constitutes symbol. An object must be gradually evoked in order to show a state of soul; or else, choose an object and from it elicit a state of soul by means of a series of decodings.

Attributed to Stéphane Mallarmé.

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Iamblichus:

Granting, then, that ignorance and deception are faulty and impious, it does not follow that the offerings made to the gods and divine works are invalid, for it is not pure thought that unites theurgists to the gods. Indeed, what then would hinder those who are theoretical philosophers from enjoying a theurgic union with the gods? But the situation is not so: it is the accomplishment of acts not to be divulged and beyond all conception, and the power of unutterable symbols, understood solely by the gods that establishes theurgic union. For this reason, we do not bring about these things by thinking alone. If we did, their efficacy would be intellectual, and dependent on us. But neither assumption is true. For even when we are not engaged in thinking, the symbols themselves, by themselves, perform their appropriate work, and the ineffable power of the gods, to whom these symbols relate, itself recognizes the proper images of itself, not through being aroused by our thought.