Charlayn von Solms
@charlayn.bsky.social
Sculptor, lapsed academic
I use assemblage to create contemporary art based on the compositional strategies of Archaic Greek oral-formulaic poetry.
https://charlaynvonsolms.com/link-in-bio
I use assemblage to create contemporary art based on the compositional strategies of Archaic Greek oral-formulaic poetry.
https://charlaynvonsolms.com/link-in-bio
Pinned
Charlayn von Solms
@charlayn.bsky.social
· Aug 16
For #BlueSkyArtShow a compilation image showing every sculpture in the series "A Catalogue of Shapes". A collection of assemblages constructed to explore compositional, structural, and interpretive similarities between Homeric poetics and sculptural assemblage.
#pieces #shapes #ancientbluesky #art
#pieces #shapes #ancientbluesky #art
"and it occurred to me, I said nobody is ever going to even know a thing about this in years to come. It is going to be like any other 300 shipwrecks, commercial shipwrecks that have taken place in the Great Lakes and nobody, it is going to be completely forgotten, and that is why I wrote that song"
Music Making History: Gordon Lightfoot & The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
YouTube video by Minnesota Historical Society
www.youtube.com
December 15, 2025 at 5:11 PM
"and it occurred to me, I said nobody is ever going to even know a thing about this in years to come. It is going to be like any other 300 shipwrecks, commercial shipwrecks that have taken place in the Great Lakes and nobody, it is going to be completely forgotten, and that is why I wrote that song"
"the scale of expenditure on gambling is having economy-wide repercussions. One effect is the immiseration of South Africans who gamble away a disproportionate share of their income ... the other is the displacement of productive sectors by the nearly entirely extractive online gambling sector."
Read about how the financial sector collects fees from the billions it channels into gambling websites. #GamblingAwayOurFuture
SA’s gambling crisis: facilitators, criminals and money launderers
amabhungane.org
December 15, 2025 at 1:23 PM
"the scale of expenditure on gambling is having economy-wide repercussions. One effect is the immiseration of South Africans who gamble away a disproportionate share of their income ... the other is the displacement of productive sectors by the nearly entirely extractive online gambling sector."
Slept in my Rolling Stones shirt and got no satisfaction.
Slept in my Beatles shirt and woke up yesterday.
Slept in my Wham! shirt and woke up before I had to go go.
December 10, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Slept in my Rolling Stones shirt and got no satisfaction.
"Eurydice" by William Kentridge
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”
#ancientbluesky #classicalreception #art
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”
#ancientbluesky #classicalreception #art
William Kentridge on Instagram: "Eurydice
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” at @glyndebourne, to be conducted by @jonny_arcangelo, as part of the Glyndebourne Festiv...
Get insight into the upcoming Glyndebourne Festival production of Monteverdi's
www.instagram.com
December 9, 2025 at 11:36 AM
"Eurydice" by William Kentridge
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”
#ancientbluesky #classicalreception #art
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”
#ancientbluesky #classicalreception #art
I don’t know who needs to see this, but I did.
Charles Schultz and the original Snoopy.
Charles Schultz and the original Snoopy.
December 7, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by Charlayn von Solms
It seems that southern Africa provided an ecological refuge where people adapted successfully for more than 200,000 years – without other hunter-gatherer groups coming in from elsewhere.
10,000-year-old genomes from southern Africa reshape our understanding of human evolution | Daily Maverick
www.dailymaverick.co.za
December 7, 2025 at 12:33 PM
It seems that southern Africa provided an ecological refuge where people adapted successfully for more than 200,000 years – without other hunter-gatherer groups coming in from elsewhere.
"the narrator (who calls himself Hesiod) reflects also on the medium that allows him to present his teaching, i.e. language. His use of etymology as an instrument ... implies a certain understanding of the way in which language works, or as we might call it, a 'philosophy of language'."
A. Vergados
A. Vergados
December 5, 2025 at 9:11 AM
"the narrator (who calls himself Hesiod) reflects also on the medium that allows him to present his teaching, i.e. language. His use of etymology as an instrument ... implies a certain understanding of the way in which language works, or as we might call it, a 'philosophy of language'."
A. Vergados
A. Vergados
"All this pretending calls to mind an old Soviet joke: "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." In the Chatversity, the roles are just as scripted and cynical. Faculty: "They pretend to support us, and we pretend to teach." Students: "They pretend to educate us, and we pretend to learn."
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
www.currentaffairs.org
December 4, 2025 at 7:04 AM
"All this pretending calls to mind an old Soviet joke: "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." In the Chatversity, the roles are just as scripted and cynical. Faculty: "They pretend to support us, and we pretend to teach." Students: "They pretend to educate us, and we pretend to learn."
Reminder: technology is not always inevitable.
December 3, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reminder: technology is not always inevitable.
One of the weirder fantasy paintings out there: "Holiday Time in Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, in Honour of the Expected Arrival of a Governor-General of UNITED South Africa" (c. 1899) by James Ford depicts an imagined, Victorian era, utopian future version of Cape Town.
December 3, 2025 at 1:37 PM
One of the weirder fantasy paintings out there: "Holiday Time in Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, in Honour of the Expected Arrival of a Governor-General of UNITED South Africa" (c. 1899) by James Ford depicts an imagined, Victorian era, utopian future version of Cape Town.
Since the invention of Cubism, audiences have grown familiar with art-forms that are premised less on communicating clear and coherent messages to passive audiences in a uniform medium and style, than multiform arts that elicit active and participatory interpretive processes.
A Catalogue of Shapes
A Catalogue of Shapes
December 1, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Since the invention of Cubism, audiences have grown familiar with art-forms that are premised less on communicating clear and coherent messages to passive audiences in a uniform medium and style, than multiform arts that elicit active and participatory interpretive processes.
A Catalogue of Shapes
A Catalogue of Shapes
Collage of the day:
"Always Look on the Bright side of Life - North Korean Edition" by There I Ruined It
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLq...
"Always Look on the Bright side of Life - North Korean Edition" by There I Ruined It
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLq...
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - North Korean Edition
YouTube video by There I Ruined It
www.youtube.com
December 1, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Collage of the day:
"Always Look on the Bright side of Life - North Korean Edition" by There I Ruined It
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLq...
"Always Look on the Bright side of Life - North Korean Edition" by There I Ruined It
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLq...
"What’s missing now is the imagination to reject art that trades in well-worn formulas, stock emotions, and immediate comprehensibility and pursue work that expands the possibilities of human perception. Doing so requires creators to strive for complexity, ambiguity, and formal experimentation"
Restoring cultural invention doesn’t require upending the current industries—it just needs a small vanguard to change its direction, writes W. David Marx:
21st-Century Culture Has Hit a Wall. Here’s How to Break Through.
Even failures and half steps will be more interesting than the boring stuff.
bit.ly
December 1, 2025 at 6:59 AM
"What’s missing now is the imagination to reject art that trades in well-worn formulas, stock emotions, and immediate comprehensibility and pursue work that expands the possibilities of human perception. Doing so requires creators to strive for complexity, ambiguity, and formal experimentation"
My flea market find of the year: a green enameled Salter No.50 shop scale in working condition 😁. Got it for the bargain price of R150! (that's $8,77!).
Look at that pressed enamel dial and those sensuous Art Deco hips!
An oracle in minty green 💚
Look at that pressed enamel dial and those sensuous Art Deco hips!
An oracle in minty green 💚
November 29, 2025 at 4:35 PM
My flea market find of the year: a green enameled Salter No.50 shop scale in working condition 😁. Got it for the bargain price of R150! (that's $8,77!).
Look at that pressed enamel dial and those sensuous Art Deco hips!
An oracle in minty green 💚
Look at that pressed enamel dial and those sensuous Art Deco hips!
An oracle in minty green 💚
To be fair, it is a rather tricky dragon to draw.
November 27, 2025 at 8:40 AM
To be fair, it is a rather tricky dragon to draw.
As Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi (the now former dormant volcano) erupts for the first time in 12 000 years, here is Salpeterkop, one of South Africa's two official dormant volcanoes. (Pilanesberg comprises the root zone of an extinct volcano).
Dear geologists, Lion's Head just looks like one, right? 🌋😬
Dear geologists, Lion's Head just looks like one, right? 🌋😬
The Salpeterkop Volcano - Dr Mike de Wit
YouTube video by Geological Society of South Africa
www.youtube.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
As Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi (the now former dormant volcano) erupts for the first time in 12 000 years, here is Salpeterkop, one of South Africa's two official dormant volcanoes. (Pilanesberg comprises the root zone of an extinct volcano).
Dear geologists, Lion's Head just looks like one, right? 🌋😬
Dear geologists, Lion's Head just looks like one, right? 🌋😬
Reposted by Charlayn von Solms
New research suggests the vast 3,000-year-old earthwork of Aguada Fénix in Tabasco was designed as a monumental cosmogram mapping pre-Maya concepts of the cosmos.
buff.ly/DPWHHjL
buff.ly/DPWHHjL
November 24, 2025 at 3:00 PM
New research suggests the vast 3,000-year-old earthwork of Aguada Fénix in Tabasco was designed as a monumental cosmogram mapping pre-Maya concepts of the cosmos.
buff.ly/DPWHHjL
buff.ly/DPWHHjL
Family portrait: Mnemosyne and her daughter Melpomene
November 17, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Family portrait: Mnemosyne and her daughter Melpomene
Reposted by Charlayn von Solms
Artist William Kentridge discussing Philip Guston's "The Studio" (1969):
"it's a double self-portrait. You've got the artist painting the artist, painting the artist. So it's a painting about what happens in the studio."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0a...
"it's a double self-portrait. You've got the artist painting the artist, painting the artist. So it's a painting about what happens in the studio."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0a...
William Kentridge responds to Philip Guston’s 1969 work, ‘The Studio’
YouTube video by Hauser & Wirth – Art Gallery
www.youtube.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Artist William Kentridge discussing Philip Guston's "The Studio" (1969):
"it's a double self-portrait. You've got the artist painting the artist, painting the artist. So it's a painting about what happens in the studio."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0a...
"it's a double self-portrait. You've got the artist painting the artist, painting the artist. So it's a painting about what happens in the studio."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0a...
"These armors were what supercars are today. They were made for the elites. It was an honor to own one. They were like jewelry for men. They were expensive and carried a metaphysical symbolism that united the wearer with the divine."
(Dimitrios Katsikis)
www.thecollector.com/historically...
(Dimitrios Katsikis)
www.thecollector.com/historically...
November 15, 2025 at 4:09 PM
"These armors were what supercars are today. They were made for the elites. It was an honor to own one. They were like jewelry for men. They were expensive and carried a metaphysical symbolism that united the wearer with the divine."
(Dimitrios Katsikis)
www.thecollector.com/historically...
(Dimitrios Katsikis)
www.thecollector.com/historically...
"The image of Maladamatjaute, the "Hindoo" snake charmer of European and American renown, had begun a new life as the primary icon for Mami Wata, an African water divinity with overseas origins, joining and sometimes replacing her manifestation as a mermaid."
(Henry John Drewal, 2008).
(Henry John Drewal, 2008).
November 15, 2025 at 1:05 PM
"The image of Maladamatjaute, the "Hindoo" snake charmer of European and American renown, had begun a new life as the primary icon for Mami Wata, an African water divinity with overseas origins, joining and sometimes replacing her manifestation as a mermaid."
(Henry John Drewal, 2008).
(Henry John Drewal, 2008).
"Be pleased and show your pleasure, children of Zeus, by giving me a lovely song."
(Hesiod, Theogony 104)
(Hesiod, Theogony 104)
November 14, 2025 at 2:54 PM
"Be pleased and show your pleasure, children of Zeus, by giving me a lovely song."
(Hesiod, Theogony 104)
(Hesiod, Theogony 104)