CLOUDS / Troy Harris

Rene Laubies: Aesthetic matters: likes & dislikes

2013-06-07T09:21:00.002+08:00

Rene Laubies, it occurs to me, kept mysteriously silent on matters of aesthetics, formal or informal, vis-à-vis his literal performance (écriture), that is. I don't remember anything 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 "...

Rene Laubies, new bio blurb

2013-02-19T15:37:00.003+08:00

Rene Laubies was a painter, translator, traveler and writer. 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, while his mother was of solid Sinitic roots from the upland Phu-Ly Dynasty of Annamese Mandarins. He died in the pauper's ward of the Government Hospital in Mangalore India on 13 November

Proviso

2013-02-19T15:32:00.003+08:00

My area of focus may be cautiously expressed as ascetic-arts research methodology with a strong infiltrative-cum-ethnographic data acquisitional bias. My work is rigorously non-institutional aside from the fact that the range of South, Southeast and Far-East Asian ascetic-arts traditions that I study are invariably institutional in and of themselves.

Laubies on Nuagiste procedure

2012-05-22T09:49:00.000+08:00

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 depart. With his spirit opened, he created an inner emptiness and thereby communed with the vital force that impels the universe. In harmony with Nature, it was That which directed his

Waterlines and Nuagiste archeology; Laubies, Literati and non-figuration

2012-03-16T21:41:00.000+08:00

Distillations from an ongoing study – A lofty memorandum of narrow inlet not too obscured – as gleaned from a cluster of filtered findings on a freely given data screen of elegant inquiry I begin this set of scientific postcards from a site that I continue to scrutinize for its links to a range of kinship myths that endue its coastal caravanserai with a fadedness of anonymous hulls and their

Independent Ascetic Arts Research

2011-09-04T20:45:00.019+08:00

I deplore being drawn into association with any form religious ideology or dogma and the obsessive concerns for genealogical purity and consolidation of legitimacy that attend them. This is how I came to ascetic-arts research. Generally in the arts one finds an environment more open to the birth of theoretical tendencies and consequential schools expressing these. But a school, as opposed to the

Paul Facchetti has passed away

2010-12-07T11:33:00.016+08:00

Paul Fachetti I was recently informed that 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

Photo of Laubies

2010-10-19T15:08:00.007+08:00

Here is an image of colonial French painter Rene Laubies (ca 1917-2006) captured at Gallery Alain Margaron, Paris in 2000. See also http://www.galerieamargaron.com/index.php/news/26/60/Laubies-Rene/d,expoEnCours_detail.html

Nuagisme

2010-09-15T05:40:00.006+08:00

Nuagisme (literally "cloudism") is a French art-critical term that was advanced in the 1950s by art critic Julien Alvard (1916-1974). The term nuagisme initially designated the painters René Laubies, Frédéric Benrath, René Duvillier, Fernando Lerin and Nasser Assar whose work was seen as broadly comprising a modern naturalist non-representational abstract movement that remained aloof to

Pound's portrait

2010-06-28T14:52:00.007+08:00

Laubies' portrait [of Ezra Pound] only underscores what he told me personally (ca 1989) about visiting Pound at the facility for the criminally insane in the late 50's. He remarked that Pound – having been there for about ten years – was 'not at all affected by the environment. He got on well with a supervising official and all sorts of people were able to visit him.' He characterized Pound as 'a

Laubies on Nuagiste procedure

2010-05-25T23:13:00.003+08:00

When a Chinese painter of the ancient high period began to paint, he first burned incense and gathered his thoughts in the calm of silence, concentrated his mind and meditated. He let life's annoyances slowly fade. His spirit free, he created space and communicated with the vital force that impels the universe. In harmony with Nature, it was She who guided his brush... This is how I meditate

Laubies, Aphorism No. 9

2010-05-25T22:53:00.005+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, then suddenly stops. It knows when to stop. Aging painters lay it on more and more. Heavy toil does not restore grace. Chinese painters of the classical period knew when to stop. They accentuated accidents detected in nature. A poetic and musical work of art owes

Laubies, Aphorism No. 8

2010-05-25T22:00:00.002+08:00

Pre-war abstract and geometric painting (Mondrian, Kandinsky, Circle and Square, De Stilj) has no great diffusion. It's only after 1950 that abstract painting starts to be recognized, and at the same time attacked. It is lyrical abstraction, Tachiste, informele, Nuagiste that carries. And this is why I think that abstract art is still in its infancy. It should return to nature (which is

Paul Facchetti

2010-05-25T15:58:00.003+08:00

The flair is unexplained, 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, at what it resembles. In the film that was recently dedicated to him, one sees Facchetti walking in his gallery. It's his garden: Sima, Pollock, Hundertwasser,

Jean Fautrier

2010-05-25T14:43:00.004+08:00

Passing through "la Vallée-aux-Loups", one arrived to Messagier's house. Fautrier had filled it with old furniture, dolls, Indian wall paper. Fautrier received sumptuously: glasses from Venice, old dishes and the ferocious machine-gunning of his contemporaries. Especially Dubuffet, César and others. There were always many writers and pretty women (at a given moment, a veritable harem: arriving

A note on methodology

2010-04-20T21:01:00.034+08:00

Recent work expressly draws on a declarative ensemble of advanced study disciplines that represent an imminent ascetic arts tendency. It serially combines a range of departures that spring from a diversity of discursive fields including history, poetry, transculturalism, comparative religion, social anthropology, ethnography, rhetoric, fine arts, nuagisme, et al, but in amalgamation with a

Mark Tobey

2010-03-28T17:51:00.011+08:00

Faithful to the characters of Henry James he descended upon the Hotel Albany: gilt candelabras and cuddly toys 1900. He arrived from Basel where for the first time in his life he said "I have a house thanks to Beyeler." With Julien Alvard whom he loved much (and who had had an accident while going to see him in California) we went to dinner at George Salles' house. Mark Tobey brought his

Jean-Pierre Wilhelm

2010-03-08T13:47:00.015+08:00

When I was tired of swallowing the snakes on which Paris nourishes its painters, I left either for Italo Magliano's place in Milan, or for Jean-Pierre Wilhelm's place in Düsseldorf. As I had known him in Paris as one who had translated all that was difficult – Malraux, Michaux, etc. – when he returned to Germany I advised him to open a gallery. He and [Rolf] Järling, in Wüppertal, brought a

Alexandre Iolas

2010-03-08T13:45:00.006+08:00

His room at the Hotel Crillon was the cave of Ali-Baba: Greek marble, Egyptian statues, Matisse and Braque, small Max Ernst and Brauner, large Matta; all of that is now with the [Menil Collection] in Huston and at his villa in Athens all out of gold. His taste for and refinements to definitively established surrealism. Aesthete, he played with pink and yellow diamonds in his pocket, and paid us

Living another's dream

2010-03-08T09:05:00.007+08:00

Over the past three years of intensive painting, the notion, maybe criticism that I am in some way copying or imitating René Laubies has never phased me. But a more material question recently arises: Am I living someone else's dream instead of my own?

Colette Allendy

2010-03-08T08:28:00.006+08:00

Petite and replete, she reigned in her own Hotel de Passy where Artaud had put together "The Cenci." She was surrounded by the "Artauds": Blin, Marthe Robert, Adamov, Mrs Jouve and Paule Thévenin. Not having any prejudice, she accepted me among Picabia and Bryen and some "Café Society Americans." Petite et replète, elle régnait dans son hôtel de Passy où Artaud avait monté les "Cenci". Il y

Matta

2010-03-07T14:38:00.006+08:00

At [Roberto] Matta's, one fills the swimming pool: "This pipe is me, all the money that I make sets out again immediately. My women, my families, my house, and this swindler who exploits me (our merchant)..." Chez Matta, on remplit la piscine: "Ce tuyau c'est moi, tout l'argent que je fais repart immédiatement. Mes femmes, mes familles, mes maison, et cet escroc la qui m'exploite (notre

Laubies, Aphorism No. 6

2010-03-06T10:59:00.002+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 terror. The zeal of these petty functionaries of art makes me laugh. They are as quickly

Nina Kandinsky

2010-03-01T14:57:00.016+08:00

Nina, forever young at 80 years, walked through Gastaat with all of her diamonds on day and night. One night she was strangled by and for her diamond reverie, but then one found of them in quantities hidden behind the radiators. She lived just for that, as her friends the old billionaires who held the New York galleries in the 50s and 60s (before the tsar Castelli) lived just for whisky. A

Guido Le Noci

2010-03-01T14:51:00.022+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 over to