The Glibertine is unwell (2)

Shambling back up the hill, the white face I’d just seen floated before me. The skin beneath the make-up had been uneven, pitted below the zygomas, blotchy on the chin. How would she know the Glibertine? For that matter, how did Ronnie know she’d be there? Was I the only non-member of a Darlinghurst sect? Surely Glib, who, despite his dishevelment, I had pegged as a snob, wasn’t a card carrying member of Club Ugly.

You will understand, if I don’t disclose the Glibertine’s address. I’ve already revealed more than is prudent and I don’t want him to be leered at through windows or hounded by those who would judge him degenerate.

In keeping with the serendipity of the evening, the door opened just as my knuckles were about to strike the dark green paintwork. The Glibertine stood in the centre of the room and with the merest tip of his head acknowledged my arrival.

Welcome, my boy. It’s good of you to come.

I looked behind the door to find who had opened it but only saw an elephant’s leg, sprouting two canes, a golf umbrella and an ancient cricket bat.

Recovering myself, I advanced to him, hand extended. He waited for me to reach him fixing me with a look of indulgent bemusement. He was in black tie. The studs of his starched shirt appeared to be gold, his silk black bow was hand tied and his shoes buffed to a gloss.

Close your mouth, dear boy, you’ll start to dribble. He took my hand in his own, warm, dry and firm

Um, hello.

Yes, indeed. Hello. How apt and economical. Would you care for a drink? I’m having Manzanilla, I find Armagnac too much these days. I have most things.

He didn’t wait for an answer and walked behind a drinks trolley. I looked around the room. Book shelves from floor to ceiling on two sides. Lucite lamps on black side tables at either end of a five seater sofa, dark rugs on a herringbone parquet floor, large paintings, one landscape the other abstract, each side of the main central window below which was a desk, illuminated from the left by a modern floor reading lamp.

As he brought our drinks he motioned me to the sofa. He sat opposite me in one of a pair of exquisite chairs which appeared to be from the 1920s, with elegant curved wooden arms and a heavy square bases which fell evenly to the floor.

I thanked him again and sipped my drink, the sherry instantly drying what little moisture I had left in my mouth.

Where have you been?

I’ve been at dinner.

No, where have you been of late. Nobody has seen you. We all thought you were sick. And what are you wearing? And this place… it’s beautiful. What about the girl – she knew you and where you lived.

This place is my home. As for my dress, I’ve been to dinner. And I am quite well, thank you. I just haven’t been to the local for a while. You’ll have to be more specific about the girl.

I had nothing to say in reply. My mind was racing. The Glibertine - the man who wore pyjamas to the pub, the filthy hair, the yellow fingers, the confidant of hookers and the homeless. What had happened to him?

He sat back in his chair, saying nothing, and waited for me to recover my composure. His eyes never left my face as he reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a tarnished silver cigarette case. The opened case was extended to me.

From it I liberated one, from among ten, of the most expertly rolled spliffs I had ever seen.

The Art Gallery of N$W

Let us assume that the purpose of a publicly funded art gallery is to make art available to the public in an engaging manner without compromising the beauty or integrity of the art works on display.

Does the Art Gallery of N$W achieve this? Not on the evidence of several recent visits.

The permanent non-contemporary and Asian art collections are solidly, if uninspiringly, displayed. The Australian contemporary collection on the upper level is starting to look a bit tired and needs to be refreshed.

The presentation of modern art on the lower levels is appalling - an uncaring mess which cramps some fine work into awkward spaces and treats other, brilliant, work with disdain. The majority of work though, with some notable exceptions (mainly British), is tosh characterised by its inherent worthlessness and poor presentation.

Lighting has always been a problem at N$W. Patchy at best, in some cases, it actively detracts from the work displayed.

One example will suffice. Anish Kapoor’s Void Field (1989) (please note the title) consists of four waist high blocks of Nothumbrian sandstone each of which has been hollowed out. According to one of the few intelligible curatorial descriptions, the large discs atop each appear to be black velvet “but on close inspection are revealed as holes in the rock”. Indeed, they are. They appear as velvety menisci, impenetrable to the human eye. What’s more, after realising that the velvet discs are holes, the viewer gradually becomes aware that, “there are no apparent sides to the holes and there is no visible end to the space”.

Not at N$W. The block at the south western corner has been so indifferently lit that the interior of the stone is illuminated, utterly destroying the illusion and instantly detaching the viewer from the work’s magic.

Kapoor is a master of space and this treatment not only undermines the integrity of the work but its very reason for being. The illusion on which it relies has been destroyed. A disgrace.

That the security guard watched as a family disported themselves on the work to better grease the stones with body oils (and shoved recently French fried mitts into the holes) confirmed the apparent contempt with which N$W treats artist and patron - at least, those patrons who don’t think they’re at an amusement park.

Sensitive lighting is essential for the proper display of art. Does N$W employ professional lighting experts? That is, professionals expert in the illumination of art, rather than fashion shows or cocktail parties.

Leaving N$W at 4.00pm recently, further contempt for patrons was on display. The main entrance gallery was given over to a score of waiters setting up for dinner. Here the real preoccupation of N$W was revealed in all its corporate hideousness.

If you want to see public art, don’t waste your time in Sydney. Head to the public galleries of Melbourne, Brisbane or, better yet, North America - places which have not lost sight of their reason for being.

The Glibertine is unwell (1)

It’s the darkness of my local I find most welcoming. Most pubs are bright enough for microsurgery but the Greenie is dim at the start of the night and keeps getting darker. The bar staff work the dimmer, gradually blunting the edge of the amphetamines. Theirs and the punters'.

By closing, the patrons almost look attractive. OK, normal.

Apart from darkness, a visit to my local is worthwhile for an audience with the Glibertine, though for several weeks he’s been absent. On Tuesday night, the babymaids confirmed he’d not been seen for a while. They didn’t seem to miss the wet end of his harangues, a mist of Irish and spittle.

Sandra, the St Vincent’s sister, grey from years of night shifts, said she’d not seen him for weeks. Nor had Ronnie, the former tart who’d only ceased to practise her profession when after 15 years of paying for it, Frank, a small, possumy client, proposed that he do so no longer. Instead he would look after her in his damp inherited terrace.

Why don’t you pop round and see him, love?, Ronnie suggested, whiskey and coke briefly glistening her septum before being channelled to her mouth along the smoker’s crenulations of her lip. To my surprise, I agreed.

Frank, who’d been sitting unnoticed in Ronnie’s lee, squeaked sketchy directions, punctuated for emphasis with wide eyed blinks. For a moment, I was paralysed by an image of him, pink fingered and toed, startled up one of Ronnie’s ample legs, pausing at knee for a whiskery twitch, and then on, possibly to safety.

I left.

Though it’s escaped much of the poncification of the Cross, Darlinghurst isn’t once what it was. Hookers and the detritus of drug use are on the decline but I kept my head down and walked fast down Liverpool to the Glibertine’s digs.

The darkness deepens outside the First Church of Christ Scientist. I knew this is where a single girl might stand, the texture of her face in shadow but the height of her hem illuminated by any car crawling back up the hill.

I still jumped when a woman stepped out from the shadows.

Wanna girl, darling?

She was close to me and stepped closer. Somewhere between 18 and 38. Thick powder with a red gash for lips. Very white. Very thin.

Sumfin special? Whatever you want.

She was beside me now, as I kept walking. I blurted out that I was late to meet a friend. She grabbed my elbow and we stopped.

You the bloke lookin for Doug? I frowned and looked at my shoes. Thought so. Ronnie called me.

The woman was waving a child sized telephone covered in stickers.

You come too far. She knew ya would. Back up there, to the right.

I thanked her.

No worries. Be good to Doug, right.

It wasn’t a request.

Just then, I felt very tired and out of my depth.