How to Use "Into The Light of Things"
Into The Light of Things is a theoretical work aimed at other professional theoreticians. Within it, however, I placed discussions which would support my courses. This is standard practice in major research universities, where all the professors are authors. If you have never used a professor's book to follow his course, you'll be pleased at how much it helps. I wanted students to be able to find fuller versions of the most vital lectures-- advanced versions, to be sure, but if you heard the lecture, you should be able to follow them. If you missed that vital lecture, they may take some time to puzzle out, but they can save the ballgame for you. Before tests, they're an excellent review. You can also find spellings, dates, terms you may have missed the first time around. I asked Prof. Howard Isham, who held my professorship until he retired, to prepare a careful Index especially for student use, knowing San Francisco State students as he did. His index doesn't just say Leaves of Grass, page 18, or istoria, page 32, 42; it says Leaves of Grass (Whitman), page 18 and istoria defense (art objects superior to mere real things), page 32, 42. Extra help. All my comments on a topic are gathered from around the book. It took Prof. Isham three months to do this unusual index, and I'm grateful.
Remember, I don't mark you on what you believe, but only on how well you argued your case, displaying your mastery of the technical terms. If you know the terms and the concepts they represent, you can go on educating yourself by reading, after the course. Before the final, be sure to scan down Prof. Isham's index itself, and when you notice a term or a name that came up in class, look it up, if you're a little fuzzy about it. By May, most of us are a little fuzzy, to say the least.
One of the important things an introductory course can do for you is suggest where you can read more about topics you become interested in, and even evaluate the books, warn you which axes they may be grinding. I designed the footnotes to do all that for you. They start on page 194 and run forty-six pages of fine print! I thank the University of Chicago Press's Kathryn Kraynik, who spent six months (!) assembling the information with me. You'll find lots of guidance: "The best book on him is...." "For a less friendly critique of him, see...." "A good background to his works, among many books on the general subject...." "Now somewhat dated is...." "A book that really sucks is...." No, I didn't write that, but when I thought so, I said so politely. As Ed used to say to Johnny Carson, "This book contains EVERYTHING you need to know about the subject!" No, but you could use it to find that out.
Here are a few main discussions that we'll cover this year in class.
* Classical Art, and Art before 1800
The istoria 32-35.
The Ideal 35-37
The Zeuxis parable 37-40
The Phidias parable 40-41
Joshua Reynolds turns the Zeuxis parable into a course vs. Mere real things 45-49
* Natural Supernaturalism: the art which transfigures the everyday
Arthur Danto and the end of art 3-5
An odd story 200, line 3
Emerson: art should merely train you for mystic vision 13-19
NS is actually an eruption of mysticism that couldn't come up in the churches, so came up in the arts 19-27
Thomas Carlyle: a core statement of NS 85-88
Ruskin teaches you to see the world 103-108
NS comes to America: John Muir, California's National Parks, and American nature religion (be sure to read if you think you have "no religion") 108-112
* John Cage: Natural Supernaturalism succeeds
Full treatment of Cage's career as NS: 119-192
4'33" to Earth Day: the final transfiguration of the commonplace 168-174
* Zen and Buddhism
How DT Suzuki created a new Zen for the West 146-162
* Some relevant discussions which often come up, and topics of interest to many students.
If you've ever wondered whether art really mattered, here's the strongest explanation of why humans, in all known cultures, practice it. Art as "spiritual metabolism" which human beings will always need: Richard Kuhns 11
How does "influence" work in the arts? 79-85
Why "aesthetics" matters 208 note 52
Thomas Kuhn and his famous theory of paradigm shifts 98-101
Italian Futurism (and how it did most of the 20th century avant garde first) 138-143
Marcel Duchamp and Dada 230-234, note 91
Was Warhol really a genius? 236-7
Allan Kaprow, the Happenings and the road to Earth Day as the ultimate Happening 187-190
Is NS immoral? Is it wrong to be looking at the flowers while people are suffering?184-187