MY LITTLE POLEMIC

by BETH LOVE

It was about 4 years ago that I met Hanin Elias and Atari Teenage Riot. Admittedly, I was not so interested in youth music culture at that time, as I was already thirty-two years old and had properly completed my own personal rebellion in my twenties. This music belongs to youth because they need it. It is exclusively theirs.
I saw this ATR motto, this riot call "Destroy 2000 years of culture" on one of their CDs, and this caught my interest, because I have always wanted to see civilizations burn.
I was in San Francisco when the last big earthquake hit, and when I saw the smoke from the Marina district burning, I was charged and elated .When the news broadcasts came out about the damage, I was disappointed that it was not more extensive. I love natural disasters. They're good for people! I was also there when Elvis died, but that's a different story. Please allow me to introduce myself. I was a friend of Anton LaVey (Satan rest his soul) and my name is Beth. Beth Moore-Love (really!) and I'm a painter.
When Hanin asked me to contribute something for the first issue of FATAL, I had to think back to the time I was asked to participate in a show exclusively for women's art. I turned down the offer for two reasons, first, I've yet to come across any of these obstacles that I've heard get thrown in your way by the man's world.
That's probably because I don't associate with stupid sexists. Of course if a man is a sexist, he probably wouldn't come right out and declare it. But if he is not stupid, he will show my work, because it sells, and it's good, and he can make make money. I just don't think that men are such a problem. I like to take a step back and see the whole picture, which I think goes beyond male & female per se. Many artists get ignored because their work is too uncomfortable for some individuals who happen to possess about three-quarter of the power pie.
I know many of these artists, and most of them, as well, are men.
Secondly , I felt that the women participating in the show were doing women's art for women, and I don't understand how they could expect men to be interested in it, if they are biologically excluded from understanding it.
In my work, I prefer to address themes which originate primarily from the experience of being a contemporary human. That way, anybody can get something out of it.

As a woman, I don't like this hierarchical power structure that exists, but neither do most of the men I know.
It was at the age of twenty-nine that I figured out exactly what I wanted to express as a painter. I've never been to art school and I never wanted to go. You can teach someone to be a truck-driver, but you can't teach someone to be an artist, if they have nothing to say.
Now I was not completely ignorant about the world of art or art history. I grew up fifty miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an artist mecca of the U.S.A, so I knew quite a bit about all this. You know, Max Ernst was there, Georgia O'Keefe and so on. To be honest, I don't really like what has become of art, especially as it is in New York, and so when I began to paint I threw out all notions of art history, what art should be, what is art, relevance to the zeitgeist and all that claptrap.
I just took a good look at the empty walls of my home and thought, what would I like to see there? What is it that I want to hang on my walls? What can I paint that satisfies me? Because, you see, I'm really hard to please that way. I didn't care at all if the work sold or not, but it does.
I didn't give a crap if anyone else liked it, but they do.
My work expresses my secret wish to destroy two thousand years of culture. I think western culture has entirely too high an opinion of itself. Western culture was arrogant enough to declare itself the acme of human development.
The day the Mayflower arrived on the shores of unspoiled(!) America is now a national holiday called Thanksgiving.
The natives call it Thanks for nothing day. The concept of civilization was humankind's first big mistake.
It robs us of our natural humanity and makes us as neurotic as monkeys in a zoo. At best, it keeps the weather out.

Now the first impression you get when viewing my work is the beauty that belongs to the natural world, or that of a young girl, it draws the viewer in with lush visions. Take a closer look and you get hit in the eye with some small details so horrible, that some people forbid their children to view my work.
These works are very female, the expression of a woman who feels closely related to everything which is alive in the world, but who has somehow to come to grips with civilization, overpopulation, and the perversion of reality.
When you hear people talk about the real world, they're not talking about the natural world, which is the only truly real thing in it. They're talking about Wall Street or maybe even Hollywood ! (I need not say anything about virtual reality here, the term speaks for itself).To be civilized these days, you must agree with the popular consensus of reality or it doesn't work. For example, everyone must have a job of some sort, or be a bum. You got to pay your rent, or be homeless. You got to pay the bills, or be a looser. And when you finally have time to yourself, it's time to crack a cold beer and watch the telly.
Television sells products obviously, but what it really sells, is boredom. The structure of power as a multi-faceted entity, is not really worried at all about national boredom. Boredom is good for the economy. Bored people like to spend money on fun things, as fun things make people feel less bored for a while.
Far more dangerous would be a nation of individuals who feel no compulsion to consume. This would be against all rules of supply and demand, which is a very important cornerstone in the foundation of capitalism. Fortunately, there is really nothing boring about life.
Truth is stranger than fiction after all.
I've decided to refuse boredom and I've never been bored since. I simply always do exactly as I please.
Sometimes I have money, sometimes I don't, but I've been dirt poor and happy. If you can learn to be happy when you have no money, then you can be free.
If you doubt this, you are just being stupid. There are many successful failures in this world, and I am one of them.
I like to paint and read books, listen to music by idiots, travel to new countries and fuck the men there, chew the fat with interesting people and I like to spend a lot of time just starring into the air. I like to take lots of time, because time is something I like to waste not working too hard.
I hate clocks. Clocks cruelly tick away the moments of your life. Stone-age Africans don't count every single year of their lives. You're either a child, an adult, or you're old. None of this "Oh my god! I'm 40!"
It just seems nicer not to think of all that. Time is money, and laziness is revolutionary. It keeps you young, fresh and clear.
It is anathema to the work ethic.
It's also natural. Primitive cultures on the average enjoyed about eighty percent leisure time. Your boss doesn't want you to be lazy. The work ethic is another important part of capitalism's foundation. Hard work is held as a supreme virtue in all first-world countries, or in any culture throughout history based on hierarchy, for that matter. That's why sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.
If everyone made a resolution to be lazy, and do just exactly what they please, two thousand years of culture would collapse tomorrow. However, every little bit helps.
The easy revolution! That's just my style. I may be a nice white girl to the eye, but in my soul I'm a Red Indian savage.