Born in Carlsbourg in 1948, I lived 16 years in Japan where I became a painter of hyper-realistic portraits with amber.

Return to Spa in Belgium in 1990.

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As Empédocle threw himself into his volcano, Daniel de Saint-Yon plunged 50 years ago into the “human bondage” of passions to explore all its shadows and lights. He will tell us today in words and images the burning thread of this singular story, totally atypical, of hearts in disarray and bodies in chaos ! but first, he wants to clarify why he finally stripped himself and staged with his latest Japanese model, Haruka Akasako.

Faced with the daughters of Lot leaning forward to reveal the sex of their drunk father, trained during his sleep, Noah’s sons reveal their father’s erected sex by turning their backs on him! Denuding the male body, seeing its “shameful and naked” things, this is the scene that forms the heart of the villa of the Pompeii Mysteries. The nudity that was invented there is perhaps the most fundamental phantasmagoria within the original taboos. But why has this denudation always been so impossible ?

Few modern painters (including Jean Rustin accused of pornography), threw themselves into this adventure of the male nude through a few rare self-portraits (Jean-Baptiste Frenet, Egon Schiele, Albrecht Dürer, Joerg Chess, Jean Rustin…). As for the female nude, it is commonplace. I imagine that this is an indication of the power of men concerned with ensuring their domination in the face of mysterious, coveted, elusive or bewitched women. A way also to control these victims by idealising them.

For a very long time, no doubt, man has never stopped trying to oust this natural animal part within him. Now, if the human has gradually acquired a thought, it is always in a body that remains almost identical to that of its oldest “ancestors” ?  This is precisely what I am trying to show today in my latest paintings, my series of “stark naked painter” sexualised, free, anarchic : the simple, animal state, with all the details of its sex, images of our most intimate shelter, the only ones capable of rendering its true nature and animality to our “desexualised” and “denatured” bodies.

This last step seemed obvious to me. It had become necessary for me. It was Haruka who, through her demand for an authentic relationship of equality, helped me to take the plunge by inviting me to strip off my clothes as well during the poses at the studio, in order to establish a fair balance between the painter and his model. It was for me a discovery and a joy that I wish to share today.

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