John Baldessari (B. 1931)

The Frog King is one of a series of six works created in 1982 for dOCUMENTA 7 in which John Baldessari parses out fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. In this tale, a princess reluctantly promises her companionship to a frog in an attempt to retrieve something lost; a precious golden ball, accidentally dropped into a well. Maddened by her decision, the princess flings the frog against a wall at which time the creature transforms into a fetching young prince.

In a concise and brilliant pictorial rendition, Baldessari employs a mix of found imagery from Hollywood films to illustrate the various motifs from the story. He explains that: I had always wanted to work with Grimms fairy tales and since the brothers lived in Kassel, I decided that dOCUMENTA would be the occasion for doing these works. It is not a literal, linear narrative or retelling of the tale but an attempt to engender the psychological tone of the story. The black and white photos are cropped versions of various movie stills available in Los Angeles. Since I believe movies are mythmaking, I decided to transform the tale from one form to another. It originally was an oral tradition anyway and movie stills may reinvigorate the old anxieties these tales addressed. The color shot is by me and is intended to be a synopsis of the tale. My aim is to say the most with the least means. I am more interested in content than form (J. Baldessari, quoted in American Art Since 1970: Painting, Sculpture, and Drawings from the Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984).