The stain of sliding cloud and sea...

2026-10-26T06:37:44.074+08:00

Rene Laubies (1959) Technique mixte sur papier

Rene Laubies, an abstract thesis

2026-10-26T01:22:00.000+08:00

Welcome to our ongoing research project, an abstract thesis not on or about, but very close to the life and work of painter, translator, writer and Chan-dao guru Rene Laubies. We elucidate his legacy by drawing attention to the Euro-decentering cultural hybridity innate to his commonplace ascetic-arts procedure

Laubies, Aphorism No. 9

2026-10-25T15:30:00.000+08:00

A painter who claims to paint what he wants is mistaken. The painting is imposed on us, changes its course, goes left and right, and then suddenly stops. It knows when to stop. Ageing painters lay it on more and more. Heavy toil does not restore grace. Chinese painters of the classical period knew when to stop

Guo Xi as cultural toponym

2026-10-25T03:48:37.228+08:00

"Early Spring" (1072) by Guo Xi (c. 1020–90) GUO XI, the distant eleventh-century cultural figure, wafts as a buoyant toponym on the mirage-like horizon of Laubiesian Studies. How disposed should we be about this ominous placement: the

Laubies, Aphorism No. 6

2026-10-25T01:03:06.494+08:00

The conservators in France are like all the French, they detest the painting and the painters that live. Deaths reassure them, but be on guard because the "second death" of official artists may prove definitive and these conservators will in the final analysis pass for idiots, which is in fact their secret

On Cloudist Methodology

2014-04-28T20:39:00.014+08:00

Cloudist methodology may tersely be defined as a natural, reflexive calligraphic tendency of literati colour field non-figuration whose outcomes exemplify not the expression of the individual or its cult, but the advancement of ascetic arts ontology.

The Legendary Paul Facchetti

2013-09-18T00:54:00.000+08:00

His flair is inexplicable; if not for that, it would be too easy and everyone would have some! When seeing a painting for the first time Facchetti senses what is new in it, what is personal, while the others all look at what can sell, what it resembles. In the film that was recently dedicated to him, one

On Laubies' work

2013-09-17T00:30:00.000+08:00

The naturalist non-figurative and abstract impressions of Rene Laubies, the spiritual head of 'Nuagisme'; that vague appellation coined by his critics who overlooked his exteriorized plasmas spreading like

Nuagisme (literally "Cloudism")

2013-09-16T02:00:00.000+08:00

Nuagisme (literally "Cloudism") is a French art-historical-critical term advanced in the mid-1950s by art critic Julien Alvard (1916-1974). It was coined to describe a class of painters – René Laubies, Frédéric Benrath, René Duvillier, Fernando Lerin, Nasser Assar, and possibly others – whose work

Italo Magliano

2013-08-28T15:30:00.000+08:00

Rene Laubies (1924 - 2006) "Sky," 1967 Oil on paper, 50 x 55 cm Greek National Gallery, Athens (inv. no: Π.4090) Donated by Paul Facchetti On

Guido Le Noci

2013-08-28T14:45:00.001+08:00

He discovered my painting at Facchetti's gallery when I was in the United States. He had opened his gallery in via Brera [in Milan] with the support of Italo Magliano, Count Panza, Visconti etc... These collectors immediately bought several of my paintings and I became the friend of Magliano who supported me for more than forty years. Through me, Le Noci knew Fautrier. When I brought him

Laubiès on Pound

2013-08-27T23:30:00.003+08:00

Ezra Pound «I don't remember having any difficulties returning to visit Pound at St. Elisabeth's Asylum. I asked him whether the surroundings obstructed him. "Not at all" he said, "these are the only acceptable Americans." «When I let him know that I was born in Saigon: "Ah, that's why! Only Europeans with a master key to the Suez Canal are worth anything...."» «He died quiet

Palma Bucarelli

2013-08-27T22:01:00.001+08:00

Palma Bucarelli At a dinner in Rome where Ione [Graziani], fiery inspirer of Ungaretti, praised physical love, Palma turned to me and said, "What a bore!" This extremely intelligent and effective woman had in fact to be ired to make use of her beauty and obtain what she should've gotten naturally. She made her Museum of Modern Art towards and against everything. In a few months she wrote the

Fautrier, Seibel, Facchetti, Le Noci, Magliano

2013-08-27T18:54:00.001+08:00

We find it interesting (correct us if we're wrong) that Jean Fautrier (1898-1964) did not have a solo post-mortem show until 26 years after his death (Jean Fautrier, Museum, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1990). The reader may recall our brief discussion with art-critic/author/editor Castor SEIBEL who we met at Galerie De Meo, Paris, in March 2008 (Assembling notes around Paul Facchetti). Seibel has

Assembling notes around Paul Facchetti

2013-08-26T20:36:00.002+08:00

We would like to assemble some scattered notes in homage to Paul Facchetti (b. 1912). The spur of our account is very recent news that this exceedingly rare photographer and artist continues to flourish in Paris. We first came to learn of Paul Facchetti in our initial phase of bio-art-historical investigation of nonfigurative painter René Laubiès (1922-2006). In the process of establishing an

Boomtown ports: not for your amusement but your edification

2013-08-25T23:55:00.009+08:00

How do such instances of vital sensibility sustain themselves in an ambiance of memory? Why do they impel us, call attention to themselves like private graffiti dragged into alleyways of interfaciality and interspatiality? What can be supposed from these collectible emissions as if children demanding to be seen and heard, who denounce curatorial arts as bollix and play at what they do until

[OLD]: Tipped into sheer prefiguration

2013-08-22T10:05:00.002+08:00

René Laubies (French, 1924–2006) Mykonos, 1958. Oil on paper laid on canvas, 65 x 100 cm. (25.6 x 39.4 in.) On learning of the passing of Rene Laubies the figurative infix died all around me. It had taken the death of my friend and teacher to tip me into sheer prefiguration. I had never been able to go there in spite of my arriving to the crucial point of esteeming non-figuration solely

Paul Facchetti has passed away

2013-08-21T11:33:00.000+08:00

Photographer and gallery owner Paul Facchetti died on 27 November 2010. He was 98 years old. Facchetti was the consummate mid-20 to early-21st cen global art-historical patriarch. Paul was among Rene Laubiès' earliest supporters in the 50s in Paris, and his Galerie Facchetti was the first to exhibit a selection of Laubiès' work under the banner of nuagisme. In Portraits et Aphorismes (2001),

[OLD]: Interiorising Southeast Asian Histories

2013-08-15T21:48:00.005+08:00

Of the tropical agricultural and horticultural goods that stimulated 15th century Southeast Asian sea trade both among herself as well as with the world, the black peppercorn or Piper nigrum was far and away king. This was followed by cloves, then nutmeg seed together with its outer covering called mace, then raw palm sugar and benzoin resin widely used in incense manufacturing. Next

[OLD]: Eurasian artist René Laubiès (a draft note)

2013-08-06T17:01:00.010+08:00

In many ways a product of South-South trade, its culture exchanges, African-Asian capital flows including peripheral hybridizaiton (Verges 2003) at a time when steam ships ruled the sea. As Laubies explained it, "I am not French. I am Colonial French. Nor was he white, but a French-leaning Creole-Afro-Eurasiatic: the product of an overseas "Creole" French jurist and a Catholic Mandarin

Laubies on Nuagiste procedure

2013-07-16T20:30:00.000+08:00

Rene Laubies, 1981, oil on coated paper mounted on stretched Belgian linen "When a Chinese painter of the ancient high period began to paint, he first burned incense, calmed and stilled his mind, collected his spirit and meditated. He let life's troubles and sordid propaganda gradually

Rene Laubies: tracing the non-figurative

2013-07-11T17:18:00.005+08:00

We came across Pan Da'an (潘大安) and his valuable essay "Tracing the traceless antelope: Toward an interartistic semiotics of the Chinese sister arts" (College Literature, Feb 1996) while researching the theoretical underpinnings of the colonial French non-figurative painter Rene Laubies. This project requires an historical grasp of the Dhyana/Chan/Taoist contribution as stems from ancient Chinese

Art Informel

2013-06-11T15:54:00.000+08:00

In its 1950s French art critical context, Art Informel (alternately spelled Art informal) indicated little in the sense of "informal art," the proposition of a casual, loosened or relaxed art handling or simple diminution of formal-ness. Art Informel was pointedly concerned with the non-appearance of form itself, with the un-formal, the un-form-ulated. Nuanced more insightfully, its cardinal aim

Rene Laubies: Aesthetic matters: likes & dislikes

2013-06-07T09:21:00.005+08:00

Rene Laubies, it occurs to us, kept mysteriously silent on matters of aesthetics, formal or informal, vis-à-vis his literal performance (écriture). We don't recall much from private talks either. His concerns fixed always on matters ontic: method, procedure, spirit of the place, "his rhythm in the doing it." Or as he wrote in the preface of one of Robert Creeley's early books, "because it's

Rene Laubies, new bio blurb

2013-02-19T15:37:00.005+08:00

Rene Laubies was a painter, translator, writer and Chan master though more Taoistic in quintessence. He was born in Cholon in the Imperial French Colony of Cochin-china to a well-off family around 1917. His father was Réunionnaise French-Colonial. His mother was of solid Sinitic roots of Dynastic upland Phủ Lý Annamese Mandarins though Catholic. He died in the pauper's ward of the