The Pot Boiling
Signed Print

A large cylinder is filled with water and floats in a space made of dark cross hatched marks. Bubbles rise to the surface of the water to suggest it is boiling but this pot has no handle and there is no fire beneath it. These incongruous details add to the feeling of the uncanny that pervades the empty scene. With the knowledge that it relates to a dark tale from the Brothers Grimm, ‘Fundevogel’, the scene becomes foreboding. Fundevogel, or foundling bird, relates the tale of a forester who comes across a foundling in a bird's nest while out walking with his daughter. The girl becomes close to the boy but one day the cook threatens to put him in her large pot and boil him to death so they can eat him. The girl and the foundling run away and transform themselves into a series of objects in order to escape the cooks' servants until eventually they trump her and save themselves. Hockney published his series Illustrations For Six Fairy Tales From The Brothers Grimm in 1969 as an edition of 100. Drawn to the ‘simplicity’ of the tales as well as their combination of ‘the magical and the moral’, they became the perfect subject to display his mastery of the medium of etching.