Margaret Honda - frog

Introduction by Eric Crosby. Text by Leah Mirakhor, Tenzig Barshee.
On Californian artist-filmmaker Margaret Honda’s sculptural reprise of a Renaissance oddity

This volume documents Frog, a five-foot-long anatomical frog sculpture by Los Angeles–based experimental filmmaker and artist Margaret Honda (born 1961), inspired by the gargantuan frog in Bramantino’s Madonna delle Torri (1520).

"Honda's lone, human-size frog, lying supine and pitifully exposed on a bed of luxurious rugs, is easily one of the most unnerving sculptures I've seen." —Henriette Huldisch, Artforum

For the 82nd installment of Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum series, Los Angeles-based artist Margaret Honda created a singular, enigmatic sculpture—a frog rendered in lifelike detail measuring nearly five feet long.

The work is modeled after a frog-like form Honda observed in a Renaissance painting at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The painting, Bramantino’s Madonna delle Torri (1520), depicts the Madonna and Child enthroned; at their feet lies a slain man and a gargantuan frog with anthropomorphic features. Honda's sculpture extends beyond surface representation to include the skeleton and internal organs, none of which are visible. At once material and philosophical, her work prompts us to ponder our relationship to art and the world we make.

frog is an in-depth look at Margaret Honda’s sculpture. With an introduction by Eric Crosby (Director, Carnegie Museum of Art), texts by Leah Mirakhor and Tenzing Barshee, and conversation between curatorial assistant Hannah Turpin, Carnegie Museum of Natural History curator of herpetology Jennifer Sheridan, and Renaissance art historian Christopher Nygren, this book further contextualizes Honda’s work and practice.