Transcription
Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss—which originally is supposed to be pronounced Dr. Sois, but I'm not going to say that because there's probably only like five people on the planet who pronounce it that way—and Geisel himself eventually switched to the anglicized version, Dr. Seuss, was one of the most famous and successful children's book authors and illustrators in the world. His books sold more than half a billion copies, and for many of us, his works produced cherished childhood memories. And while his use of language and his storytelling abilities are something to be admired, his artwork was also a memorable and integral part of his stories. Dr. Seuss's signature wacky, gravity-defying art style is unmatched in its uniqueness.
While we all know Dr. Seuss mainly for his excellent children's books, animations, and the maybe not so excellent films made after his death, there are many artworks that are not as known but still definitely worth talking about. Dr. Seuss began as a cartoonist in the 1920s for magazines and other publications such as Life and Vanity Fair. In 1931, Dr. Seuss illustrated a book called *The Pocket Book of Boners*. Mm, at the time, "boner" did not have the sexual connotation it has today and originally meant a silly mistake. It was a humorous book full of illustrations and was one of the best-selling paperbacks of World War II. This book was actually a collection of four books titled *Boners*, *More Boners*, *Still More Boners*, *Prized Boners*, and then even more compilations were released titled *The Omnibus Boners* and *The Second Omnibus Boners*. That's a lot of boners.
In 1937, Ted Geisel wrote and illustrated his first children's book, *And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street*, which had lackluster sales but garnered glowing reviews because of its imaginative story and visuals. Around the 1930s, Dr. Seuss collected things like antlers and other leftovers from dead animals, which his father would send him as he worked at the Springfield Zoo. He would take these parts, combine them with papier-mâché and paint, and transform them into busts of fictional creatures. He called the eventual eighteen sculptures that would result from this process "unorthodox taxidermy." Some of my favorites have to be the Gugu Tasmanian wool gassed, the Mulberry Street unicorn, the seagoing dilemma fish, and the sawfish—that one has a surprisingly normal title.
Later, but still pretty early in his career, he became a political cartoonist and, during World War II, produced over 400 cartoons. The funny thing about these drawings is that many of them contain creatures and caricatures that are very familiar to the wacky animals later seen in his children's books. So it gets very surreal when you see something like Horton representing the GOP and Adolf Hitler drawn in his signature whimsical style. But just to be absolutely clear, Dr. Seuss was very opposed to fascism and American isolationism during World War II. But he wasn't always on the right side of history, especially when you highlight these two comics. Oh ooh, these are these are spicy; these are very spicy. Of course, you have to keep in mind the time period when these depictions were acceptable, and yes, he did support the Japanese internment camps at the time, but clearly his ideas changed quite a bit later on. These political cartoons, while interesting, are not as polished or witty as the children's books he would later write.
Dr. Seuss's art style has remained very consistent throughout pretty much all of his career. To demonstrate this, you can take a quick glance at any of the advertisements that he illustrated and immediately recognize his signature style—anything from Ford to Standard Oil to a detailed drawing of hell for General Electric. I cannot understate how unique and recognizable Ted Geisel's art style was. His figures are simple yet complicated, plain and rounded, droopy faces contrast with intricate cross-hatching on things like clothes and fur. His characters are very gestural and lively, and his buildings and machinery are no different; they often seem to defy gravity and rarely contain any straight lines. The use of cross-hatching and reliance on pen and ink, along with the strategic flat colors seen in most of his books, probably comes from his experience as a cartoonist, with the goal of keeping the interest of younger audiences. And combined with the ridiculous designs of his creatures and machines, they all form an identity that is overwhelmingly and undeniably Seussian.
The rhymes, inventive made-up words, and timeless storytelling are the core of his children's books. The imagery he uses to bring that whimsical poetry into visual forms is essential to the experience of a Dr. Seuss work. And what makes this style more intriguing is when it's put into different situations—from political cartoons to taxidermy. But there is another collection of lesser-known Dr. Seuss art that I find the most interesting of them all: dozens of paintings that Dr. Seuss made in private and were not to be released until after his death—a collection he liked to call the Midnight Paintings.
What strikes most people first about these paintings is how different they are from his mainstream works. There's a lot more black and other colors in these works, and many of them have a more ethereal quality. Clearly, these paintings were made for more emotive and leisure goals rather than storytelling ones. It's hard to summarize the many paintings he produced behind closed doors, so it's really best to approach them case-by-case. The secret Dr. Seuss works have a variety of styles and subjects. This painting, titled *Cat Detective in the Wrong Part of Town*, is reminiscent of Kubis' works but with brighter colors and typical Seussian architecture. A few other paintings contain a similar style, but for subjects like resorts. Others are more dramatic, forcing the viewer into unorthodox perspectives, like this Dutch angle view of blobs of color leaping out of a brightly colored ocean, or this drastically curved landscape that seems to extend for infinity. Some are entirely abstract; others are more pattern-based, like this painting of dozens of working-class birds walking up and down, made to express Geisel's economic concerns. Then this painting, *A Plethora of Cats*, was made for a simple reason: to show a lot of cats. But more specifically, as a form of relaxation—to see how many cats he could paint and how many are on this one canvas—exactly 392.
A more satirical set of works called *The La Jolla Bird Women* resulted from Geisel people-watching from his La Jolla tower studio. These thin bird folk were made to gently poke fun at his neighbors, and as you would expect, they are quite simple: they're women, but birds. The works I think are most interesting are the ones that are darker, both in color schemes and subject matter. A very simple painting titled *Cat in Obsolete Shower-Bath* demonstrates the purely aesthetic choices of the darker paintings. The brushstrokes and layering of color are erratic; there are no flat or smooth colors, just textural, grungy spots forming the environment. The greenish-yellow of the shower curtain is reminiscent of mold. There is speculation this is meant to represent how early in his life Ted Geisel had to spend time in dingy one-room apartments. This overlapping gradients and textural painting is a far cry from the clean, calculated coloring of his children's books, and many of these paintings seem to represent a seer, almost cynical aspect we didn't usually see in his art.
One of my favorite paintings, *Cat from the Wrong Side of the Tracks*, seems to imply, just from the title, the subject is an inversion of the child-friendly Cat in the Hat. The face is more angular, his whiskers unkempt, and his aura is overall more sinister. To complement this, we get more Seussian architecture, but applied to a pool table with a bunch of nonsense angles and extreme distortion. One of my favorite details is the beads above his head. Everyone knows the saying "a cat has nine lives," right? Well, let's just say that it seems eight of his beads are used up, and there seems to be just one left. A similar painting, *Indistinct Cat with Cigar*, develops a theory that these cat representations could be something of an alter-ego, considering that Dr. Seuss was a lifelong smoker, and just like how we never saw him smoke where a child might see him, these paintings, too, remained hidden. It's hard to find any self-portraits of his that are positive or pleasant. One of them is quite blatantly titled *Self-Portrait of the Artist Worrying About His Next Book*. So it seems to me some of these works might have been Dr. Seuss's version of vent art. Well, that's probably an oversimplification, but you get what I mean.
Probably one of the creepiest, darker paintings is *Surly Cat Being Ejected*, where this grotesquely long cat is being sent away by this almost faceless, mannequin-like woman in the dead of night. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why I find this work slightly unsettling, but I would guess it's the combination of all the uncanny and distorted elements. Of course, in contrast, there are many wholly bright paintings, such as this sunny seascape full of roaring waves and the impossibly long tail of a bird being manipulated by the great swirls and fluctuations of the wind. The dynamic shapes that Geisel so masterfully produces give this painting a great sense of energy and movement. Then there are paintings that walk a delicate middle ground between melancholy and hopefulness, such as *The Great Cat Continuum*, made during his later years. Dr. Seuss's cat seems to walk through an enormous line of windows, from one experience to the next, each with slightly different shapes and distortions. There are a few with biblical meanings, such as this depiction of the Tower of Babel, or this cat named Joseph, cats sporting a brightly colored outfit, clearly alluding to the story of Joseph and his brothers. But the ones that are my favorite come from a stage in the Midnight Paintings often referred to as the Sky Souls Deco period, referring to the black backgrounds and golden structures. The iconic and strange asymmetrical, slightly organic architecture is illogical, almost alien—even more so than in his books—because this time there are few basic structures to even signify something inhabitable, not even a window or roof. The only thing that is an indicator are the stairs—stairs that seem to lead nowhere. And when you have this architecture set in front of an almost pure black background, both with a single creature resting in the middle, you get this immense sense of isolation, abandonment, even. It is difficult to assume that the people who built these structures are even living there anymore, but the creatures currently relaxing in these structures are happy; they are a beacon of life and hope, and that's why, with this sense of isolation, you also get this immense sense of tranquility. Other Deco paintings give off similar feelings, but not as intensely as these two.
When I first heard about these secret paintings, I wanted to find some sort of code to crack, some puzzle or hidden meaning behind these private works that could possibly unlock some of Dr. Seuss's genius or give some magical window into the man's soul, or reveal some deep, dark secret. But of course, these paintings are a variety of things—none of them really gossip-worthy. And while they do reveal some sides to Ted Geisel that were previously unknown, they're also fun, humorous, and express his imagination just as well as in his books, but with more coloring and subject matter freedom. The many atmospheres and moods expressed in the Midnight Paintings are often different from his books, but I can say with utmost confidence they are just as creative. [Music] You [Music] You're not just wrong, you're stupid. Now wait just a minute.