author's note: i'm honestly a little bit embarrassed to post this because it is extremely self-indulgent. i just really, really love art. i recommend looking up the art pieces i mention, but it isn't a necessity. again, i do not own the cover photo.
the swing, by jean-honoré fragonard; infidelity
London does not treat Ryan nicely. No, London is cold and rainy, gloomy in all the worst ways, and it's awful. It's wet. It's foreboding. Maybe it's foreshadowing and Ryan should have seen it coming all along.
Ryan hates it here. It's stifling, it's lonely, it's anything but cheerful, really. He wants to go home but he can't, not now, not when there's so much he has left behind.
He's always been good at running away.
It's Friday night. Hertford House in Manchester Square is unusually quiet. Indeed, the museum, the Wallace Collection, is nearly empty, devoid of people, but Ryan has one more tour to do before closing.
He hates Rococo. He'd much rather turn to Titian's masterpieces, wax poetic about Rembrandt, and revel in Rubens, but no. He has to explain Fragonard's shitty pastel colors and Watteau's fête galante, but he didn't specialize in French art for nothing.
"And to your left, you'll see a piece by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It's called The Swing." Ryan's French pronunciation is terrible, but he figures he can be forgiven. It's late and he doesn't even speak French. "It's essentially about infidelity. See the man in the bushes? Yeah, he's totally looking up her skirt. She knows it too, look at the way she's looking at him. Cupid's keeping her secret, if you notice the sculpture by her lover. It's ironic, though, because there's a dog in the bottom right, a symbol of fidelity. And her partner, the one pushing her, is none the wiser."
He wants to say, fuck the aristocracy, fuck hedonism, fuck dirty liars and cheats, but he doesn't because that's against company policy. If he didn't have to keep his summaries PG-13, he'd go off about how Rococo is a sham and even though it's aesthetically pleasing, it's garbage. Really, he can spend forever talking about how everything Rococo stands for is absolute trash, but he'll save his listeners the grief.
He finishes the tour with Watteau's The Halt During the Chase, and soon, the group that he was leading disperses.
Ryan feels alone again, when everyone finally leaves and he has to lock up. It's a short walk to his apartment, and he spends the stroll thinking. He's in his head a lot these days, lost to the world. He sees art in everything, and it's hard to separate real life from paintings, but even so, he can't help but feel like there's something missing, something that art can't compensate for.
He's still distracted when he gets home, and he when he opens his door, he really, really wishes he didn't have to see the scene before him.
Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Compositionally, they're different, but in content? Ryan sees red.
His girlfriend is in bed with another man.
She's in pale pink, a slip of a dress hanging from her thin frame, and she's laughing, giggling, her face hidden by the sheets. Her slippers are on the floor next to her, on top of her lover's clothes. Ryan's not the one pushing her, though, and the bed doesn't look anything like the red and gold swing. There's no dog to complete the scene, no Cupid to keep a secret.
"What the fuck?" he exclaims, and his girlfriend and her lover immediately detach themselves.
"Ryan, no, it's not what you think," his girlfriend says. Ryan rolls his eyes. He can count the amount of times he's heard that one before, but he'd need both hands and maybe a foot.
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contrapposto
FanfictionRyan works in a museum. Shane doesn't understand art. They fall in love.
