An American Etcher with a Nice Bite
Life's Too Short for Nuance, says Louis Netter

Louis Netter is a young American with an international formation. Born in France (“My dad was working there for IBM at the time...”), with an Irish mother who is a linguist and teacher, he studied art in the U.K. and then spent some time traveling around Europe. Netter is 34 years old, married with no children yet. He adds at the bottom of his last email: “My lovely wife is a nurse. We live in Yonkers, NY literally on the border of the Bronx. We are both running our first marathon in November.”

"My book, Life's Too Short For Nuance, came about in 2004 after the reelection of W, along with my realization that never again in my lifetime would there be such a perfect storm of ineptitude, corruption and balls-to-the-wall greed, and that I'd better get to work.”

Q: Let' start with an easy question: Who do you think you are, using your undoubted artistic talents to attack and undermine virtually everything the United States stands for, everything that mainstream America holds sacred?

A: The artists I admire are artists who always took on the world they lived in with an eye for exposing what some might consider uncomfortable truths. Grosz, Gillray, Daumier and Ungerer, for example, didn't censor visual ideas that were probably quite shocking in their time. For me, their work is more than just being provocative with the intention of shocking patrons into seeing the truth behind the walls of power. It's also work that revealed the idiosyncrasies of the artists' own ideas about sex, power, religion and society. In short, the art that turns me on is imbued with the strange machinery of the artists' mind and it is often brutal and strange. Mainstream America is so naturally odd, violent and illiterate it is hard to create work that could be any more shocking or disappointing than the reality.

I don't believe that the United States holds its culture sacred because it is so disposable. In America we are always waiting for the next thing to consume. Therefore, culture in the American sense of the word, is simply consumerism. Whether it is religion or fast food, Americans are fervent consumers of fatty and flavorful things and ideas that leave them with broken bodies and broken hearts. The sum total of all of this consumerism is a country that has abandoned any stable idea of a unifying culture for a devotion to the promise of the future. That future looks more unsustainable by the day.

The big dumb machine that is America will need to figure out a new direction sooner rather than later. My fascination with America and Americans lies in how unaware most of them are to the violent and dumb world that surrounds them. Drawing America is a guilty pleasure. It is like watching a car accident from a safe sidewalk and instead of calling emergency services, I am grabbing a pencil and deriving twisted pleasure in seeing the absurdity and tweaking it so find some sad and strange truth.

Q: What kind of upbringing/education did you have which has brought you to your present state of mind? To what do you attribute your twisted
view of almost everything? Were you diagnosed early on as a strange
child? Did you schoolmates call you "Nutter?"
A: From a very young age I always spent my summers in Donegal, Ireland with my mother's family. I always wanted to call myself Irish instead of American. It was such a beautiful country and the community of my cousins (of which I have 26) and aunts and uncles, was so important to me. I felt such an affinity for the place that I cried every time I left. Upon returning to the US, my childhood friends were convinced I had a little brogue and I am pretty sure that in my head, I still entertained the notion that I was in fact Irish and just waiting out my time in the States till I could be a potato farmer and roam the fields with my border collie and look over Lough Swilly on a beautiful misty day. My disdain for American comes from knowledge that there is a better way. It may not be as profitable but it sure as hell is more humane. Nevertheless, I stuck it out here.

I have probably always had strange ideas and I have always loved making art. I always had a technical facility for art but my most significant education came in my studies in England. My teacher, Mario Minichiello, revealed to me something about drawing that my American art school experience was sorely lacking. I realized that instead of having the conceptual and technical in two distinct worlds only brought together at the final creation of a piece, reportage drawing or drawing on the scene revealed to me that the process of drawing was conceptual in itself.

With this new armor, I started to see that in my own drawing was an emerging language that enabled me to create personal work that was not only distinct but flexible. This language of marks and dashes bridged the gap between my twisted brain and my pencil. That was the birth of the way that I work today. I think the extravagance in much of my work is surprising to even me. I can honestly say that I don't always realize how harsh or strange my work is. Besides close friends, most people wouldn't realize the apocalyptic daydreams that fill my head. I am a fairly shy person whom without booze would probably never leave my studio.

Q: What have you got against patriotism, religion and free enterprise, anyway? Do you deny that it was dog-eat-dog capitalism that made America great?
A: Patriotism, religion and free enterprise are independently fine things and when practiced with caution and restraint, can be a part of the quilt that is any society. What we tend to do in America is overdo it. Patriotism becomes tunnel vision, blocking out the high crimes of government for a perceived end and letting fear define a worldview. Religion is polluted with political ideology and people are moved to see their beliefs as absolute and are therefore ignorant and intolerant. Free enterprise becomes a trough from which the rich gorge themselves and societies institutions are weakened by prolonged looting and dishonest practices.

The greatest export of American culture and decadence is ambition. Our ambition is admirable and if I can say anything nice, I would say that when steered in the right direction, the American people are highly capable and can mobilize their creativity to get us out of the most bewildering problems. Let's hope it works this time.

Q: So you disagree. That's fine. But don't you have any respect for anything?
A: I respect many things, almost everything, in fact. But for the sake of revealing a misdeed by anyone, I have no problem turning them into a strange image capable of making them squirm. Unfortunately, what I do in the dark corners of a studio in New Rochelle, NY, will rarely if ever bring about change in the psyche of any person or group caught in some evil deed.

Q: Who follows your work, anyway, mostly liberals and anarchists?
A: Liberals and anarchists are my bread and butter. I would love to get more anarchists on board, though I must admit that I don't actively participate in any political groups. For the sake of my artwork, I want to have the freedom to spill my vitriol into any group at anytime regardless of their and my political persuasion. That is why the anarchists are so appealing. My brother considers himself an anarchist but I think he sees the obvious limitations and impossibilities of that philosophy in America.

Q: You seem to take satisfaction in finding your homeland grotesque. Are you incapable of seeing the positive side?
A: The positive side of America is it's people. I have wonderful creative friends and a wonderful wife. We Americans are subjected to a culture that is beneath us and like any powerful undercurrent, it is capable of rendering many people intellectual sloths. There are many grotesqueries in the fabric of America.

The wealth dynamic in this country is set up so that caricatures of the rich and powerful will always be set up as examples for normal people, distorting their values grotesquely.. I still cherish the images of the used car salesman and the military contractors and the sweaty evangelists. They are the strange creatures we have given birth to and there is so much to explore about the darker sides of human nature that I am unlikely to get bored anytime soon.

Q: We understand that most of your images are etchings. What prompted you to use that painstaking and antiquated medium? What do you gain with it? Please tell us something about your techniques and practices. Do you have your own etching press? What size are your editions? Copper or zinc plates? What papers do you use?
A: I started etching fairly recently, in 2003. I learned etching under Bruce Waldman who is a master draftsman and with whom I share a deep appreciation for the inherent power of gestural drawing. I started working in zinc mostly because of its cost compared to copper. I quickly realized after experimenting with copper, that there was another advantage to using zinc. Zinc has a line quality that is unique and when deeply bit, it has an intensity and abrasiveness that was very appealing to me. I came into some copper recently and am enjoying the opposite qualities of sensitivity and articulation of line.

I leave my plates in the acid for long periods of time, often adding straight nitric directly to the bath. Etching is a laborious process but it has dramatically improved my work and my process. Prior to scratching out my drawing on the plate, I create several preparatory drawings or auditions for the main event on the plate. These drawings, often based on sketchbook drawings and photographic reference, act as a visual guide for a final drawing which carefully attempts to retain the freshness of the gesture that exists in my sketches. I sketch with a litho crayon on the plate as a guide for my drawing.

I find a soft litho crayon enables me to have a guide and not damage the underlying metal surface. I print my work on Rives BFK white and buff. I color my prints using liquid watercolor, watercolor, colored pencils, and acrylic. I work on an artist proof that I work on top of. I have shown several of my etching in galleries, making several prints and selecting the best results. I have yet to make my own editions and look forward to that. I print at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop in NYC.

Q: Do you also work in other media, such as paint, sculpture, artist's books, digital?
A: I have recently completed a very bleak animation called Cakeaters inspired by an etching I did early in the process of my book, Life's Too Short For Nuance . The animation was all hand drawn and colored in Photoshop land Mirage. The animation was done in Mirage which is now TV Paint.

My next animation will be more fun and will explore the absurdities and minor perils of fat Americans on a beach in North Carolina. It is called Parade and will be completed in the Fall of 2009. I create sculptures for my graphic novel called The Picture (due date someday before I die, hopefully) and for Parade in plastecine. These are invaluable guides for keeping consistent characters.

Q: Please tell us about your new book, Life's Too Short for Nuance. How did it come about? Where did the title come from? Where do people have to go to buy it?
A: Life's Too Short For Nuance came about in 2004 after the reelection of W, along with my realization that never again in my lifetime would there be a perfect storm of ineptitude, corruption and balls-to-the-wall greed, and that I'd better get to work. I had done several pieces prior to that which ended up in the book, but 2004 was the year that I got energized and angry.

The title referred to the absurd claim that John Kerry was too nuanced in his policy answers and that W was more convincing because he was plainspoken and, like his base of support, mentally deficient. The title works both ways. It can be an indictment of a public's unwillingness to absorb all of the facts, even the painful ones, and, or, a clear refusal to dance around the blunt and harsh truth that our country was held hostage for eight years by a disconnected frat boy. People can buy the book at www.louisnetter.com and www.amazon.com . Shortly it will be available at Barnes and Noble. It is currently available at http://www.bn.com.

Q: Who are your influences? Degenerates like Goya, Hogarth, Ensor and Grünewald?
A: My favorite artists are Grosz, Dix, Cruikshank, Hogarth, Ungerer, Lautrec, Sylvain Chomet, Nicholas DeCrecy, and Daniel Clowes to name a few. I am interested in artists who have been able to interweave their conceptual world with their visual world. Not only have hese people have been capable of creating places that are as vivid as our worst nightmares, but they have extended their worlds into dark sub currents most people are unaware of.

Q: Having studied in Europe and spent time traveling there, what made you decide to return to the U.S.A. Weren't the Europeans grotesque enough for you?
A: I greatly enjoyed living and studying in England but my art was never about England. I didn't have enough cultural familiarity to be a competent commentator. I went to Loughborough College of Art and Design in the English Midlands. I filled many sketchbooks with rough characters from the dark corners of Leicster and Nottingham and was threatened several times by guys who saw me drawing their girlfriends rear ends in all of their wide splendor. Fortunately I am a fairly big guy. When standing, I am 6'3 and 200 pounds of crazy American. Even the meat-head council-house thugs could appreciate that I would at the very least be a tough fight.

I had wonderful brilliant friends in England who always made me feel intellectually insecure due to my disabling American education. I finally came back to the States in 1995 after a six-month stint in London. I was a struggling illustrator with some questions about how the hell I was going to survive and thrive in a field that I could clearly see had passed its prime. I wasn't willing to scrape by for my art because, and besides I wasn't sure that doing artwork for other people was a good fit for my rebellious work.

I also came back out of curiosity. My artwork in England was strangely all about America . I did a book called America for my thesis project. I was even more fascinated by the enormous contrasts between my lives in the U.S. and the U.K. The quietness and the intelligence of my English friends and the culture that we could all absorb even on English TV was so different even from my friends at home. I had outgrown many of those friends but I wasn't convinced that I had outgrown America. Instead, I was fascinated by the idea of living again in the ugly machinery that was such a source of inspiration for me. I miss England but I think my career and my work have advanced farther that it would have if I had stayed in England pretending to enjoy doing other peoples artwork.

Q: Do you exhibit as well as publish?
A: I am one of the directors at The New York Society of Etchers and have exhibited with them in New York City and across the U.S.. I am currently curating a show called Politically Speaking, I'm Personally Offended, a collection of politically inspired work from artists who don't make exclusively political artwork.

Q: People who criticize as acidly as you do are obliged to propose alternatives they consider better. What would you propose? What would you change?
A: I think people who cry and complain about taxation are ridiculous. I think we need to start seeing that we need to change radically the way we pay and use our taxes. Americans don't feel that their tax money should support other people, and even the hysteria surrounding universal health care makes me question whether that mythic American sense of community is just a sham. Truth is, we don't really care about our neighbors and are so unwilling to pay for collective services that we will struggle even when the we need them ourselves. Basically I would move closer to socialism but retain the positive mechanisms of capitalism.