This is fundamental. It changes everything.

I recently discovered the ideas of Vittorio Guidano, who from what I can gather was a Chilean psychologist who wrote on an approach to cognitive therapy he called "post-rationalism" (there is very little information about him or his writings in English; I have found one decently translated interview and one essay, both intended to provide an easy-to-understand summary of post-rationalism). He is someone I wish I knew about 4 months ago; the concepts of post-rationalism are really relevant to what I wanted to explore both in my thesis and in general. It maintains that logical, rational thought is only a portion of the ways humans can and do interact with the world, and there are plenty of legitimate other ways to experience the world besides through rationality (for example, emotionally). The interview is great, it talks about self-contained order, the world as one perceived by non-impartial entities, and domains in which logic isn't applicable. I'm going to continue to try to find books or anything in English, though he also makes me want to speak Spanish.

A good solid net for me, too

I haven't blogged about a singular artist in a while, and Javier Pinon's been on my list of artists to write about too long as it is. First of all, collage is something I have wanted to work with for a really long time but never have had much luck with; a lot of good displacement going on in it. But Pinon not only fulfills my collage lust, but has a great offbeat, folky, neo-neo-classical style. He turns classic mythological tales into psychedelic westerns, or maybe the other way around, and creates great scenes of weird human-animal hybrids engaging in weird death rituals. He's one of a too-small pool of artists who make me really really want to make shit; his colors and sources and compositions are out of this world. Is Pinon's work more style than substance? Maybe. But it's still a wellspring of ideas and feel-goodness. Also, the size of these really cracks me up, but that's an inherent limitation of collage I suppose. Which I approve of.

The Sacred Grove, Javier Pinon, 2010, collage, 16"x26", from his website.







Hercules and the Hydra, Javier Pinon, 2007, collage, 11.5"x8", also from his website.