OFF TOPIC with Steve Mixup. A place for me to tell the odd story or two about the post war rock generation. If they couldn’t change the world at least they brought us some wonderful music.

In the late nineties in the course of my photobooth studies (What’s that! You didn’t know I was one of the worlds leading photobooth experts) I came across a Frenchman who used the photobooth machine to produce some pictures. It was another of the many artists I could add to my list, who have used the machine to create some art. I can’t remember how I found out. It might have been the early internet. I was early on the uptake but it may have been through some magazine. I had an address, from the article, which was in Paris. His name was Nato.

As I was going to Paris for a holiday with my son in 1998 I thought it would be great to find this artist and talk photobooth pictures. So, on a fine summers day we found our way to a quiet courtyard close to Montmatre, where we was staying, and knocked on his front door. This was unannounced, I just took a chance, but someone was in.

The door opened and there stood a naked man with long hair and John Lennon specs. I wasn’t to taken aback, this was Paris after all. I’m not sure what Sam, my son, thought. I explained why I had called and he realised it was a genuine request and in a whisker he had thrown on some garments and beckoned us in.

It was an artists pad for sure and after offering us a drink I explained my interest in photobooth art and he found his collection to show me. He was pleasant and chatted about his art. I don’t speak French and his English was patchy but good enough. However, photobooth pictures weren’t his main artistic concern just a small side line and he gathered some of his other art books for me to take home. His art was nudity and the aesthetics of sex. That’s the best way I can describe it. He was serious about his art, it wasn’t a comedic adventure.

Nato is actually from Brussels but moved to Paris. He talked of his sixties youth, seeing The Rolling Stones and making his own music. He had a home studio space in the basement where he and his family and friends would have improvisational freeform jazz noise jams. He gave me a CD of one of these sessions and with the art materials he gave me we left.

He either mentioned he was going to appear on British TV or I found out about myself but one night he appeared on the late night Channel Four programme “Eurotrash”. A programme, as it sounds, full of obscure and stupid things. Entertainment, I think they call it. It aired in 1999 and I remember his contribution was laughed at, not really understood at all. Footage of him running naked through Paris or did he come over to London, I can’t remember, just raised typical British chuckles. I can’t remember if I took a photo with Nato when I was there. Probably not, as I kept my clothes on!

Funny who you meet in this world.

Here are some of the posters and books he gave me. The CD too.

Hear the whole 34 minutes if you dare.

On Discogs he is described so:
Nato is a provocative artist (living partly in Paris and partly in Brussels) preoccupied by the act of sex in art. His paintings depicted naked humans in a sexual context. His music is eccentric and strange, suggesting comparisons to Dashiell Hedayat and Emmanuel Booz. Nato made another album in 1982.
His discography includes:

A couple of the tracks from the 1974 “Nato ACTuel UN” album are really interesting. You remember the word interesting, when we mean weird shit. Satanic, pothead, folky, noise sort of weird shit.

I think this is the title track. Nato ACTuel UN – le diable et dieu

This one is real strange. It doesn’t say what the title is but I don’t think we need to know. Weird Satanic Strangeness.

A little of his art can be seen here

And if you want to go the whole hog look here (It is graphic but only in the sense of his artistic outlook)

As I said “Funny who you meet”.