Object Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
2020.003.004 |
Object Name |
Painting |
Description |
Artist: Like salacious and misleading headlines, my painting's title grants F. Scott Fitzgerald heroism, robbing Zelda of agency, similar to the world enduring 2020. I used watercolors for the anthropomorphic figure to indicate a lack of control regarding spread of disease and misinformation. Haloed by wallpaper, the bleeding of Zelda's watercolor figure further attaches her to the domestic, a chair, in the same way many have been quarantined at home. Her lack of facial features expresses her lost autonomy, reflecting how society's time to self-reflect in this crisis may have often been met with there being no self to find. My painting's subject begins with 2019's social media posts cheering for the second round of the Roaring Twenties, and Zelda Fitzgerald, iconically referred to as America's first flapper, plays a role in this romanticized image of the Jazz Age summoned by social media. Much like 2020, however, the expectations of what her life would be like varied greatly from its tragic reality: Zelda's marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald was plagued with alcoholism and his plagiarism of her writing; diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 30, she later died at 47 in a fire at Highland Hospital in Asheville, NC. The association of 2020 to the Jazz Age continued during the pandemic as a McSweeny's piece satirizing F. Scott Fitzgerald-writing of sheltering in France with Zelda during the 1918 pandemic-went viral. While the author provided a disclaimer of parody, screenshots of the pseudo-letter cropped out the satire label and were shared by quarantined people perhaps charmed to see the Fitzgeralds endured a similar time. The situation, however, further illuminated the spread of pandemic misinformation, indicative of the larger so-called "fake news" issue, a circumstance I attempt to represent in my painting inspired by the fake letter. |
Date |
2020 |
Artist |
Danielle Byington |
Dimensions |
H-18.5 W-15.5 inches |
Collection |
Local Art in the Age of the 2020 Global Pandemic Special Collection |
Title |
F. Scott Fitzgerald Heals Zelda from the 1918 Flu |
Place of Origin |
USA/Tennessee/Johnson City |
Material |
watercolor, acrylic, mixed media paper |
Subjects |
American Art Appalachian Art |
Search Terms |
Appalachian Art |