The Tears of Things

This Little Light: My Encounter With A Flame-Snuffer

This Little Light: My Encounter With A Flame Snuffer
by Catherine King

An ephemeral piece of art, set up in an empty lot, has been haunting me since last August (2002). The installation, constructed by Mark Rubin-Toles, was eerie and enigmatic.

Even now I can close my eyes and travel back to that night. The rundown street opens onto a dark plain strewn with broken glass. Stretching across the dusky field I see an immense design made of hundreds of luminaries. I draw closer. I can feel the blackness settling around each candle-in-a-beer bottle, completely defining its separation. I begin to walk along the tiny lit trails, and they seem to form a lonely little landing strip in the middle of some vast black vacancy. I start to imagine desperately solitary fliers, landing in this desolation, forever unmet by human acknowledgement.

Suddenly I run into a wall of anthropomorphic pathos. It seems as if each candle feels isolated, unaware of its place in something bigger. I sense the pervasive loneliness of souls oblivious to their own relationships. The atmosphere is thick with the ghosts of the unquenched. You wouldn't want to be the only living soul out here in this vacant lot.

Looking back, I'd have to say that Rubin-Toles created an extremely evocative experience. A few months later he wrote about the piece for Shade magazine [not online], and displayed a photograph [not online] with his short essay. When I saw the picture my memory stirred, and when I read the article I was carried on waves of resonance.

I learned that the installation, called Beer Molecule 8.02, was about the impact of alcohol on a community. The piece drew its meaning from the legions of losers who drained the world out of the bottles that lay shattered over the wasteland. Yes, it was the cumulative hopelessness of all those souls that permeated Beer Molecule 8.02. I knew now that the array of lonely votives was summoning the self-poisoned who languished in this lot.

I was tremendously moved by the delicacy with which Rubin-Toles had rendered the fact of society's wasted ones. His art, his writing, are so unusually perceptive, I said to myself, and so sensitively humanistic. Read for yourself: "The effect that [alcohol] has on human physiology and psychology is similar to that of candle-light: a soft, warm glow, which does not dispel the darkness, but forces it back for a time until the wick burns low, or the cells metabolize the chemicals in the bloodstream."

My husband and I were so impressed with this artist! Not only had he created a beautiful artwork, but he also helped us solve a design problem. We had been gathering material for an installation of our own, Souls It Takes, for several months. We knew we wanted to put together a wallwork about men behaving without boundaries, but we still needed a visual organizing principle. Rubin-Toles's piece suggested a solution. Beer Molecule 8.02. was based on the ball and stick model of an ethanol molecule. The ball and stick model of a testosterone molecule would work perfectly for our installation.

We proceeded to set up the wallwork in our studio and called it Testosterone Atrocities. Jerome was so pleased with the way it turned out, he emailed Rubin-Toles in Tucson to acknowledge Beer Molecule 8.02, and thank him for the idea of the molecule model. Rubin-Toles replied that he would be back in town soon and would like to see the wall piece. We arranged to meet him at our studio in a couple of weeks and talk art.

Meanwhile, Jerome and I were beginning to plan an art weblog. I remember thinking that the upcoming meeting with Rubin-Toles would be such a wonderful opportunity to interview an important and interesting artist. When I mentioned the idea to Jerome, he said he thought it would be ungracious to make an additional request of Rubin-Toles's time. He's right, I reconsidered; we'll have a good time just casually discussing art, rather than having a formal interview.

Before our meeting, I learned a little more about Rubin-Toles's body of work, the better to converse with him. I know he went to Yale, and the Chicago School of Art, but I've got to say I was pretty disappointed with what I saw of the rest of his work. I relate to emotional qualities in artwork. I may be going against the flow here, but I thought that his Gracias, Mamacita, a birthday portrait of his mother slapped out with gigantic minimization in the multistory windows of a hard, cold, urban facade, was disconcertingly sterile and public. The means and technique were so impersonally inappropriate for the intimacy of the subject.

Oh well. The molecule piece was really strong. It would be a worthwhile experience to hear from Rubin-Toles, first-hand, about the inspiration behind it. I particularly wanted to talk with him about the candles. Did he intend the installation to be like some sort of giant earth altar to the dead? Maybe Rubin-Toles had an interest in modern spiritualism, like me. Or did he by any chance have any supernatural experiences while working on the uncanny Beer Molecule 8.02? These were a couple of the many questions I had for him.

The day of the appointment rolled around and by the time Rubin-Toles arrived at our studio he was just about ready for lunch, he said. he was hungry, maybe kind of tired (he and his wife have an infant son, he explained). So that was probably why he didn't really look around at much of our art. I felt a little disappointed. I realized that I'd really been looking forward to hearing what he thought about our art.

Oh well. The purpose of this studio visit was to show and discuss the Testosterone Atrocities wall. What did Rubin-Toles think about that? He stood in front of the wall of shame, an eight-foot-long, adhesive vinyl testosterone molecule overlaid with the faces of the battered and the batterers. He scanned the tragic testaments to unbridled misognistic rage and what did he have to say about it all? Only one thing and it was baffling, to say the least. He said:

"Heh, heh . . . That's funny!"

Here's the context so you can try to figure it out for yourself: Michael Jackson was posted and quoted on the Testosterone Atrocities wall. We chose to put him there because as feminists we were outraged when we learned he has his "tribe" of little boys recite three times daily, No witches, bitches, heifers or hos. It is offensive, isn't it? But of all the terrible accounts (see Zahida Parveen, for example) plastered on the wall in front of him, Rubin-Toles was moved to comment -- by means of a snicker -- only on the Michael Jackson note. How would you interpret that?

It comes up shallow any way you look at it. Testosterone Atrocities is a serious work about the tragedy of male violence. Rubin-Toles completely missed the point and it was definitely not funny. That was all he had to say about the very substantial piece to which we so gratefully credited his design solution. Okay, I thought, so he doesn't have much to say about our art, but lunch is still salvageable. I was afraid of the situation becoming awkward.

I mean, we knew what we heard him say, but Jerome and I were trying to keep things polite as well as pleasant with our new acquaintance. Isn't it best to give people the benefit of the doubt? When you think you hear someone say something incomprehensible, it's just a misunderstanding, more often than not, right? At the same time, I was distinctly uneasy about Rubin-Toles's snickering dismissal of Testosterone Atrocities.

Let's make sure this encounter doesn't go south, I told myself as the three of us left the studio and walked to the Quizno's next door. Oblivious to any misgivings, Rubin-Toles seemed satisfied with the art talk, such as it was. As we shuffled through the ordering line, I noticed Jerome also seemed okay with moving on. We sat down to eat and, in a nervous effort to keep the ball rolling, I found myself anxiously resurrecting the would-be interview questions. I blurted out: "Did each of the candles in Beer Molecule 8.02 represent the soul of an individual alcoholic?"

If Rubin-Toles had baffled me with his reaction to Testosterone Atrocities, he was now about to leave me stunned. "The soul?" he replied. "I never thought of that. The soul, yeah, that's good. Thank you." Thank you as in Thanks for the suggestion. I'll be sure to use it. I had a mental image of him turning aside for a moment, whipping out a little notepad, and entering Note to self: in the future, when interviewed about the beer molecule piece, the candles represent the "souls" of the drinkers.

I had to pause for a moment: Is he putting me on? He constructed this elegant tableau of haunted flames, never realizing that the little light of a single candle is an eternal metaphor for the human soul?! It's almost too obvious to acknowledge. But this guy was not kidding! I had been way overestimating his ability to grasp, not nuances, but givens. As with Testosterone Atrocities, he completely missed the point, and this time we're talking about his own artwork! For me, Rubin-Toles's unexpected density reflected on his prestigious schooling, and other things as well. I'd be needing a lot more time later on to sort out all the implications of this guy's stunning obtuseness.

Quickly, I shoved his latest reaction into a mental compartment and moved on. "Well, ah, do you have any ideas in mind for future work?" No, he said, don't have anything planned. Now I was really disillusioned with Mark Rubin-Toles, the artist. Where was the inspiration? (Because Jerome and I have notebooks filled with plans for ready-to-go pieces.) Why was this guy getting any artistic play if he didn't even have any ideas? What was that about? But then he said: Oh, wait. I think I have an old notebook somewhere with an idea for some kind of big piece. About a toothpick. Reverse-engineering a toothpick.

Jerome and I talked with him about his concept, and other artwork out there which it suggested, if obliquely -- like Damian Ortega's exploded VW and maybe Mike Kelley's Endless Morphing -- but there wasn't a lot to say because he hadn't yet really developed the Toothpick Idea.

I thought, Rubin-Toles reveals much by his selection of a trivial toothpick as subject. It was always blowing me away lately how some artists can persist with their frivolous take on Life, in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11. I couldn't relate to this guy's perspective. Oh well, press on. "Who are some of your favorite artists, then?" Pause. Well I don't really have anyone in mind. Let me think. (By now I should stop being surprised by his lack of affect.) Oh, yeah, that LA guy Tim Hawkinson, and Jon Haddock[!!] [emphasis mine].

Now he was really pushing buttons and setting off alarms. "Jon Haddock!" I fairly shouted. "I hate Jon Haddock!" Oh, he said, I think he's terrific! "But his work is so demeaning to the human spirit! I remember his first piece that I saw, at ASU -- the Buddhist monk immolating himself. Those images from the Vietnam era were so painful -- they were hard enough to have to see at the time. It's wrong of Jon Haddock to appropriate those images to make his lame-ass sensationalistic art. If he had been around then he would feel that way too."

I went on: "Oh, and then that piece he did about the people falling from the Towers! Can't you see he's just minimizing the humanity when he sculpts suffering people into little Pla-Doh-like figures? I love that piece! He was actually gushing. I especially love the modelling of the details. I spent a long time looking at it. I couldn't believe this guy. The modelling? My head was reeling.

I knew I was bright red and he must have been thinking, Whoa, what's she so upset about? It's just art. But I was just getting started. Jerome had listened to me rant plenty about Haddock's cynical yet naive take on humanity. Just because he can glom onto the pain of real, bleeding, feeling people doesn't mean he should. In my opinion, his art is terribly weak. He steals charges he never earned. If there's anything I hate, it's when the stupidly insensitive extort the emotions of those who know what it is to hurt.

It's so cool, Rubin-Toles went on, because Haddock is exploring the inability to distinguish reality from movies. Not this crap again. We had heard it before from ASU curator John Spiak, when he tried to explain Haddock's falling piece to us at his "Transit: Survival Skills" exhibition. I've noticed that Spiak, Haddock, Rubin-Toles, and others talk about this "postmodern" inability as if we all should know exactly what they mean. They get to diminish the importance of real events; at the same time, they seem to feel they are validating their little-boy videogame (death) fetishes. No, they can't get away with that. Come on, people, most of us have no difficulty distinguishing movies from reality.

I lost all self-control. "But those people, holding hands as they leapt to their deaths from the Towers -- those were real people dying, somebody's loved ones. Haddock takes the moments that should be private and uses them for his own immature expression. Why, if he were here right now, I'd like to slap his bratty face!" (Which I didn't mean literally, of course, but you can read how I verbally slap his face in an upcoming review of his work.)

I've had the hardest time dealing with what Rubin-Toles said next. He said something about the images of the poor souls jumping from the Towers being part of contemporary culture, and the image of the two who were holding hands was kind of funny. Yes, funny, like he thought Michael Jackson's misogynistic little nursery rhyme was funny. I got stuck when I heard him use that inappropriate word again for the second time in half an hour. From bafflement to fury in thirty minutes -- I had emotional whiplash! Did this guy even live in the same world as me?

He went on: That image of the couple holding hands is well known to people. It's kind of funny really. You can watch it over and over again. Some people do that. The Mexican TV stations play that one a lot. Americans have a hard time telling movies from reality.

This is snuff he's talking about! I said to myself. He's a snuff freak! I wondered how he could have the gall to sit there so smugly in a restaurant, while we were eating, and defend this snuff to a couple of people he just met? Something about the assured arrogance of golden Yalies...

In fury I cried out: "But 9/11 was one of the greatest catastrophes to the human race ever!" Here Mr. Cool Pedigree demonstrated a dab of emoting. That's what the emotionally impoverished do when the rest of us are experiencing deep, wrenching emotions. People like Mark Rubin-Toles and Jon Haddock. They emote, then sit back and mock those who really feel. Well, Mark Rubin-Toles got huffy about 9/11 being one of the greatest tragedies. He took issue with that. He wasn't about to let that statement stand. Remember that, people, while you're Never Forgetting.

No, that's not the case. It was not one of the worst catastrophes. What about East Timor, Cambodia --

"But never before had thousands of innocent civilians been taken down, out of the blue, minding their own business on a beautiful day! Never before in the history of the world had anyone had to choose to jump off a hundred story building!"

Just because it happened here, Americans feel like it was worse than it really was. We're going to war now because Americans can't tell reality from the movies.

Jerome jumped in: "No, we're going to war because Saddam Hussein is cutting people's tongues out!"

Condescendingly, as if he were about to clue us in on some big Elite Secret: Oh no. We're going over there because --

Jerome cut him off: "I've had enough, I'm done." He got up and took off and I followed him. We left Mark Rubin-Toles, the important and interesting artist, sitting all by himself on his stool with his Quizno's Meal and his Answers.

In the months since my confrontation with the flame-snuffer, I've been asking myself a lot of questions. I don't believe Rubin-Toles has answers for anything. He set up a poignant testament to the fragility of the human spirit, Beer Molecule 8.02, but he didn't know what he was doing. He got sensitive for a while, in spite of himself. The "ray of power" happened to pass through Mark Rubin-Toles and his installation, just as lightning will strike anywhere it chooses. That's one mystery. How can such a vacant guy create such a moving piece?

Here's something else I ask myself. Wouldn't you think that the brand new father of a baby son only two months old would be struck with reverence for the wonder of human life? Wouldn't you expect him to care deeply that his son, and all our sons and daughters, grow up in a world free of terror attacks? Is Mark Rubin-Toles, who has enjoyed the best in education that our free land has to offer, incapable of making the smallest empathetic step? Can he not see that the world might choose, according to his morality, to watch he and his wife holding hands and diving to their deaths from a burning 110-story tower? According to his own morality, the amused world could snicker and hit PLAY over and over again as we watched their private hell, for "fun". What did they teach you at Yale, Mark, that it's funny as long as it doesn't happen to you?

It's been months now, and I'm still furious.

Posted by Jerome at June 1, 2003 08:40 PM | TrackBack