The Kick-About No.26 – our one year birthday bash – was, at first glance, a collection of disparate things brought together into a single composition. In actual fact, however diverse, the work in the last edition of our fortnightly run-around was tightly associated: the shared dreams of an eclectic community. Our new prompt, de Chirico’s The Song Of Love, is another assembly of seemingly incongruous artefacts and what follows are our respective responses, taking in photography, painting, drawing, and collage, digital art and animation, poetry and spoken word.
Graeme Daly
“I have been having wildly vivid dreams as of late, the kind of dreams where you wake up in the middle of the night and need to write them down, the kind you remember so clearly when you get out of bed in the morning, the kind where you try to decipher their meaning to see if its some sort of cosmic message within your unconscious psyche that needs to be brought to fruition. These dreams feel as though they relate to the collective phenomena, where people at the start of lockdown had extremely vivid dreams, probably in relation to their unconscious being so fired up because their everyday lives felt like Groundhog Day, something I still feel like I can relate too. Surrealism, as an art form, is cemented in the unconscious, with surrealist painters adopting many techniques to unlock the power within their unconscious, so that it translates through to their art, including many being influenced by allusive dreams. With this in mind, and with this week’s The Song of love prompt, I have created a landscape of some of the symbols I have recently seen in one dream that has had a lasting effect..”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
Gary Thorne
“Looking through a Sotheby’s 1977 catalogue, I discovered this Georgio De Chirico self-portrait from 1924, and liked it enough to do a sketch. It then seemed appropriate to introduce Georgio to Faversham, as under lock-down I did a few sketches which all of a sudden seem like a De Chirico painting. Outside the studio sparrows are active, and a homage to Morandi seemed appropriate being weekends now favour lunch in the garden.” Unfinished oil on prepared paper 50 x 65cm.
Vanessa Clegg
“Well this is multilayered in more ways than one but suffice it to say that I used the globe, glove and shadows from the original artwork and then wove it into my own song of love! Coloured crayon on paper.” 60cm X 55cm.
Phil Gomm
“I took three things from the de Chirico painting; the rubber glove, the perspective, and the uncanny…”
Jordan Buckner
“As many have written over this past year, our lives have become perhaps a tad too much like a De Chirico or Hopper painting. The empty, beguilling landscapes feel a little too familiar for comfort, but nonetheless, these sorts of spaces are my stomping ground. The unease of architectural space has always been an inspiration in my work, and so here are a few strange tableaus inspired by De Chirico’s The Song of Love. These images are my first renders and experiments using Blender. Essentially, Blender is an open-source CG software to compete with the likes of Autodesk Maya. It’s amazing so far, and because it is open-source, it means that the software is completely free. The dream for a low-budget indie animator like myself. “
instagram.com/jordan_buckner / twitter.com/jordan_buckner / linkedin.com/in/jordan-buckner / jordanbuckner.co.uk
Phil Cooper
“I’ve always liked de Chirico’s strange and unsettling paintings. Still and airless, in a perpetual sickly twilight, they are at once magical and slightly menacing. There are peculiar objects populating his spaces, they look like props and theatre sets to me, everything rather hollow and dead looking.
De Chirico influenced the surrealists with his explorations of the metaphysical. The unusual juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements in his paintings, such as in The Song of Love, stimulate odd associations, and the emotional bandwidth of the image is that of dreams and distant hazy memories. Freud published his book, The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 although Chirico denied being influenced by Freud’s ideas. It would be easy to believe that he was, though, looking at this painting.
So, for this prompt I’ve used photo collage to shake up a conventional portrait image of a respectable looking woman and reveal layers of her psyche hidden beneath the surface. I think she may need professional help!”
instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com
Charly Skilling
“My first reaction, when I saw this prompt, was OMG! I had no idea what to do with it, so I resorted to research (the procrastinator’s friend), read around it, looked at it again, read some more… Then one day, as I sat staring glumly at the painting on my computer screen, my husband Billy looked over my shoulder and gifted me the first line of my poem. The rest of it just sort of fell into place. After that, it only seemed natural that Billy should assist in the vocals. We had a lot of fun and discussion and laughter with this poem, and I hope some of that comes over in the recording. I still don’t really know what de Chirico wanted to convey in “Song for Love”, but I do know Billy and I will always think of this painting with affection. PS _ Billy’s got the performance bug – he keeps asking if there’s a part for him in the next one!”
Wasted On Some, read by Charly & Bill Skilling
Jan Blake
“I’m in a bit of a quandry re. De Chirico’s Song of Love – not that I haven’t given it a lot of thought! So my offering is almost an insane antidote to the subject matter, but none the less a real metaphysical concept of a building that I saw in Mexico some years ago. There are no holds barred when it comes to planning permission in Mexico. This curious mixture of ideas is an artwork in itself. Originally a thirties building full of the symbolism that pertains to that era in cinemas and the like, now it is the premises of car mechanics, and they have proudly painted it bright yellow. This is a poor area of Guadalajara, full of artisans and mechanics. The joy in colour and self expression shows a true love of their craft and life itself, whatever the hardships.”
Emily Clarkson
“After having a quick read up on some of the influences behind Chirico’s work, I felt like attempting a surrealist version of my lockdown environment! I was inspired by an article written for the ‘museum of modern art‘ on Giorgio de Chirico’s ‘The Song of Love’. The author described de Chirico’s marrying of ‘dissimilar objects’, and noted that some of the eerie shapes and anxiety-inducing forms in his paintings may have been de Chirico depicting his world utterly torn apart by the first world war. It’s very hard to ignore our own monumental world event with it still happening- so I explored the absurdity of life in lockdown in the style of Giorgio. The space depicted is the dining room in which I have spent the vast majority of my time. I developed a love/hate relationship with that particular corner. Firstly my computer became less of a fun thing. It was previously a place I could work and also unwind. But then the internet dissolved into a white noise of concern and anxiety. And it became my main bittersweet connection to much missed family members. I, like many, took a deeper interest in what few houseplants I have. (We don’t have a garden) So they lived on the windowsill next to me bathed in sun for a couple of hours every morning. My routine would see me coming in each day, armed with a cup of tea and putting the computer on – except for the rare occasions I had to go outside, then breathing obscured my vision in fog. (Glasses and masks don’t work together too well during winter). Lockdown turned the world on its head and I imagine there are millions of often overlooked objects out there, whose value has been totally altered as a result.”
instagram.com/eclarkson2012 / twitter.com/eclarkson2012 / linkedin.com/in/emily-clarkson
Francesca Maxwell
“Apparently, in this painting, De Chirico refers to his life and the fundamental things that keeps us alive. Based on Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” «Aren’t all the words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to those who are mild? Sing, don’t speak anymore ». From this, de Chirico took the title of his painting: Il Canto d’amore. So, not the words. but the song of art is what makes us overcome melancholy and still love life. This painting is the song of love for life and beauty, so this is my version of the song of love to life. I grew up in Genova, a city with wonderful architecture, built on steep hills, full of steps and narrow roads. As children our daily walk was, at the end of a long tree-lined avenue, to the Rotonda over-looking the sea and the harbour. I tried with this to show a bit of the joy I felt every day running to the balustrade and breathing in the sea. I had no time to painting it, so it is a pencil sketch.” 41 x 31 cm
Kerfe Roig
“The collage I did evolved from a lot of other ideas, merging with Merril’s quadrille prompt at dVerse to use the word seed, and Brendan’s prompt at earthweal to write Songs of the Earth Shaman. I needed to consider this seemingly unsolvable riddle that is human life on earth from more than one side.”
1 Here
a handless glove, a stone
visage. A blue orb
planted with life. Dust
seeds blown by
cosmic winds.
Look backward to see
the future. Ruins
of visions. Monumental
doors to nowhere.
The detritus of humanity.
Is this all
that we wish
to leave behind?
2 A Meditation or Maybe a Prayer
for those who ask and those
who don’t answer. For those
who always make way and those
who have never been found.
For what we know and refuse
to acknowledge. For what
stands in the center of what
we think we believe. For what
remains when faith has fallen
apart. For the times that we
begin again and the times
that seem to have no ending.
For what we hold against
others and what we keep
to ourselves. For the impossible
and the improbable and all
the borders we draw to keep
from finding out.
Listen. I am
waiting for you
to come home.
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Tom Beg
“These photos taken in Japan are a mix of old and new, but in all instances I was probably looking for and trying to capture the same thing. Mostly, the sense of a passage of time, and a kind of dreamy nostalgia. These just so happen to also be the themes of De Chirico that resonate with me the most.”
twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg
With thanks to Berlin-based Kick-Abouter, Phil Cooper, we have a highly evocative film by Howard Sooley, as our new prompt, and its subject, Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage. Lots of jumping-off points here. Have fun and see you again on the other side.
Red's Kingdom 
Leave a comment