Love

Larry Wessel's feature-length documentary called LOVE takes viewers into a fascinating and strange realm of the unreal (or, perhaps, the hyper-real) -- the realm of Beth Moore-Love's art. Both Moore-Love and Wessel know that there's something spooky and nasty about American history and culture and they have reflected that in their respective mediums.

While America's founder's Enlightenment-based idealism offered a vision of a new and wonderful kind of nation, there's a dark side to it all, starting with stealing the country from the locals with brutal swindles and military campaigns. For pure creepiness one can consider the Salem witch trials, the cannibalism at Donner Pass, the madness and mayhem reported in the book called Wisconsin Death Trip (one source of inspiration for Moore- Love's art), and, well, there's the grandfather of all nutty grave-robbing serial killers and the man who provided a lead character for many films including Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs -- that crazy kooky cannibal, fashion freak, and Wisconsin native, Ed Gein. Far more destructive than the above horrors is the fact that the U.S. never hesitates to use military force, even for nothing more than to ensure cheap banana prices at the expense of the local farmers, as in the repeated invasions of Honduras. (Note: the U.S. military attacked Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, 1925 to "protect U.S. interests.")

One could say that Moore-Love's art is, in part, an expression of the idea, "Nothing risked, nothing Geined." Moore-Love takes risks in her art and pushes it deep into creepyland Americana with ease and painterly sophistication. Thanks to her ability to combine innocence (she often depicts female children, drawing on Victorian-era pop-culture images) and gore, she has gained a following in the U.S. and Europe. Born in 1964 in Des Moines, Iowa, she was strongly influenced by time spent in San Francisco in the 1980s where she met Boyd Rice, Anton Levey, and others; plus she helped run the Force-Nordstrom gallery on Market St. there and showed work by Mark Mothersbaugh and Karen Finley, and more. A meeting with Joel Peter-Witkin was important to her artistic development as well.

Wessel's film tells the story of her artistic life largely from her point of view in a series of intimate conversations at the kitchen table in her house in Albuquerque. We also see her firing an automatic weapon outdoors (perhaps an homage to William Burroughs), and going for drives in the mysterious, awesome, sometimes spooky landscape of New Mexico.

She offers much engaging and in-depth commentary on each major painting she has created. The film moves chronologically through her career, beginning with her first paintings which were done while she was studying with Albuquerque artist and lifelong artistic mentor and friend, Dale Caudill, aka Bo, who also has a prominent role in the film. He's a charming hippie rogue of an art teacher and friend and offers much entertaining commentary along with her fascinating descriptions of what went into each painting.

The film is expertly filmed, appreciative, and has enough of its own surreal touches to create the right mood for learning about Love's work. Periodically the viewer is teased with lingering shots of New Mexico's semi-wastelands. They are combined with David Lynchian sounds and music to create a slightly menacing, surreal mood. I liked that aspect of the documentary. It became at times like Moore's paintings.

The destruction of human dreams and innocence is a major theme in Moore-Love's art. Wessel subtly suggests that the Vietnam war and her father's absence while serving in the military there were an influence on Moore-Love's sense that there's an underlying violence and nastiness to American life. Curiously, one of the most striking works of photojournalism to emerge from that war is the photo by Nick Ut of the "napalm girl," 9- year-old Kim Phuc. She was fleeing the heat of a napalm bombing in a village she lived in. Moore-Love may not have been directly influenced by the image of the terrorized Kim Phuc, but the spirit of that photo and the horror of it suffuse her art.

Moore-Love is well aware of the power of the metaphor of the tormented child in fine art. Wounded waifs have been a staple motif of the lowbrow/ pop surrealist art movement that I surveyed in my books WEIRDO DELUXE (2005) and WEIRDO NOIR (2010). San Francisco artist Margaret Keane may have kicked it all off with her big-eyed girl paintings which I feel reflect a kind of wounded innocence following WWII. Moore-Love's work can be seen as part of the lowbrow art movement.

The bizarre evils and incongruities of our hierarchal, top-down managed society are the kind of things that fine artists like Moore-Love address. As Moore-Love describes the influences on her work, Wessel provides images of paintings and works she refers to. Wessel has put many hours into putting together a documentary that flows along with seeming effortlessness, but which involved a huge amount of research and work.

This documentary may not be for the squeamish, but it's well worth watching for an in- depth portrait of a significant American artist who has been addressing big issues in her complex, amazing paintings for decades.

I first came across Larry Wessel and his wildly interesting visions in a featured interview in Panik magazine some years back. Larry is the kind of artist who blasts open the proverbial can of worms with a vaudevillian sense of humor and a Satanic eye for revelation in the details.

"LOVE", Larry Wessel's new film documentary about Beth Moore Love, a contemporary American artist, explores the work and creative history of a brilliant painter whose vision comes on like concentrated hits of storytelling delivered in grotesquery; like vivisections of the id where beauty and innocence lie in close proximity, if not chained in some way, to horror, decay and cruelty.

I'm convinced only Larry Wessel could have told the Beth Moore Love story as deliberately and with such empathy, skill and subtle precision as he does.

Hatched from the personal scars and societal horrors of the Vietnam war, Beth Moore Love's formula came to her in an epiphany one day in 1989. In a conversation with a stranger about American society, the man, a war veteran, said to her, "These people are asleep. They don't know what reality is. What they need is a string of severed heads strung from post to post over the street. That might wake them up to reality."

Beth Moore Love delivers more than a string of severed heads with her painting. She takes us by the hand and walks us into the fractured light of the American soul, somewhere near the center of Eliot's Wasteland, where Hieronymus Bosch keeps his garden and Killer Zero leaves his butchered victims to the carrion birds.

Wessel's skill as a documentarian begins with his genuine ability to engage his subjects. The interviews in "LOVE" are wonderfully revealing and free of affectation. Each person has their say, offering distinct insights into Moore's genesis and development as an artist. Wessel wastes not a word, expression, or gesture. His cinematography draws us visually into the weird dimensions of Love's paintings and turbo-charges the trip with a delightful use of sound and musical score to a near hallucinatory effect.

Get ready to see what can't be unseen. Leave your comforts and consolations at home, they won't help you now. The tour bus is heading for the high desert and Larry Wessel is selling tickets to ride.

~CM Roche

LOVE - A FILM BY LARRY WESSEL: THE ART OF BETH MOORE-LOVE by Larry Wessel (2013)

"You have to understand where I'm coming from. I come from America, which is a killing field, a racially tense, hypocritical wasteland of plains, deserts, swamps and cities, where people kill each other, hang each other and lie to each other." (Henry Rollins on "MTV", early 1990's)

Here it is, right in my hands, fresh out of the air-cushioned envelope. Delivered directly from one of America's finest and most dedicated documentarists, Larry Wessel. He caught my attention when he announced his mammoth project called "Boyd Rice: Iconoclast", which he released in 2010 as a three-DVD-package, running four (!) hours altogether, leaving not one single question unanswered about the infant terrible of the international industrial muzak / noise scene, whether it be the ongoing and unnerving accusations towards his said-to-be political / darwinist viewpoints, his (now defunct) friendship with Charlie Manson or the relationship to the late Anton Lavey and his Church of Satan. "Iconoclast" to me is an undisputed monument of loads of information, a necessary example of contemporary filmmaking and an in-depth look at America's most extreme and controversial counterculture. As for LOVE, Larry returns with another information-packed documentary, an intimate insight upon another very special artist who unfortunately remains almost unseen and unknown in Europe, although she had lived for several years in Berlin. Larry's research had spanned over nine years until he could finish his project and release it on this year's Valentine's Day, zero o'clock sharp. Beth Moore-Love, who I would describe as the female counterpart of Brooklyn-based Joe Coleman, gives the viewer an opportunity to look over the artist's shoulder, describing every single aspect of meaning behind her overwhelming and intriguing paintings. And we're talking about tiny square inches here. There are so many countless details in her pictures that the use of a magnifying lens should be advised. Miss Moore-Love's understanding of art is just what our society in which we live is in great need of, and I'm not kidding. Like the aforementioned Joe Coleman, Beth's works depict the ugliness, the violence and madness of our lives by using some of the most trusted motifs most of us may know from our earliest days of childhood. Some of her paintings resemble vintage greeting cards for religious holidays or children's' birthdays. If there weren't these gruesome and shocking, yet fascinating details of total human degeneration. Her art is of a transgressive nature which knows neither taboos nor boundaries. Thank you Larry for your excellent work, and all the best for your future!

Between juggle-reading Moby Dick and Drucker's Post-Capitalist Society and watching Art Is Art and my DVR-ed monster movies, I managed to find time to pop a new DVD arrival into the player today. It was an advance copy of filmmaker and friend Larry Wessel's newest creation about the art of Beth Moore-Love, simply called LOVE!

Let me give you a quick surmise of this 2-hour documentary: Love is a film of exuberant vitality, surveying the life and works of a rarely-seen, world-class artist during her major period. In her own words and irreverent spirit, Beth Moore-Love gives us a painting by painting narrative of her provocative and often disturbing visions, revealing the unknown secrets behind each otherworldly masterpiece. Once again Larry Wessel has brought fire to his lens, showcasing a subject that might seem obscure or underground and then making it instantly accessible and understood -- and proving that the subject is indeed worthy of every exploratory effort.

Art collectors, students, fans of the extreme -- you can't go wrong in bringing Love into your life. Highly recommendable!

Beth Moore-Love is, to me, a rather unappreciated artist. Her work is spectacular; blazing in color, and containing a fascinatingly morbid tone. If you are unfamiliar with her paintings, imagine the work of a less threatening Joe Coleman, with the sense of humor and style of Salvador Dali. Many of her paintings are vivid, yet personal, recreations of quite a number of grim moments in history, with a tad of added surrealism. Admittedly, with a run time of 112 minutes, I didn't know what to expect, and how it could be so lengthy. As I watched, it became extremely clear, and I not only do I now understand, but was pretty captivated the entire time. While going into her history, as she personally goes through her past, she deconstructs quite a number of her works. Explaining what she used as muse and reference, as well as why. Seeing that her paintings are highly detailed, there is a lot of zooming into her work so as to vividly see the intricacies of her style and struggle. Her efforts pay off, as do Wessel's. Additional anecdotes are provided by a handful who are (were) part of Moore-Love's life, including Dale Caudill, Murrugun the Mystic and Stu Mead. Their recollections are often a hoot, as well as informative on the creation of the art, and even art scene of the 90s through today. I gave it 10 stars, as it was informative, and enlightening, but, most importantly, because it was a really fun watch.