The Midnight Paintings of Dr Seuss

To say that Theodor Seuss Geisel has impacted contemporary culture is a gross understatement. He’s more synonymous with rhyme than Shakespeare. His stories and characters are cultural touchstones for multiple generations of readers. And his imaginative, idiosyncratic illustrations have made his artistic style among the most iconic of all time. Yet, shockingly little has been made of perhaps his most personal and distinct works: his paintings.

Created at night and in spare leisure hours throughout his career, the so-called ‘Secret Art’ or ‘Midnight Paintings’ of Dr Seuss were not revealed to the public until 1995, four years after the artist’s death. They display all the typical Seussian elements — preternatural creatures, impractical architecture, and, of course, cats — but wildly unlike his child-oriented illustrations. They’re structurally complex, highly detailed, and reveal a level of technical ability and artistic maturity seen nowhere else in his wider work. He succeeds at a variety of styles, from the claustrophobic modernism of Cat Detective in the Wrong Part of Town (a personal favourite), to an incredible abstraction of a church in Archbishop Katz, to the surreal Art Deco of Stag at Eve. All his colourful whimsy and invention, that ethereal atmosphere that has fostered kid’s imaginations for decades, runs wild without subordination to story or meter, creating a singular space for himself in the medium. So for an artist this culturally salient, why, after 30 years, has so little been said of these works? Why are they still so unknown?

One reason is merely the collision of antithetical worlds. Seuss’s young audiences have no practical use for fine art as they do for phonic picture books, and the fine art world takes itself too seriously to let him come frolicking in with his cats in hats and assume standing beside a ‘serious’ artist. It’s not easy to argue that a work called Venetian Cat Singing Oh Solo Meow deserves much more than a polite chuckle.

Regardless what the titles may be, however, it’s their signature that holds them back. Dr Seuss is simply not a name to pronounce with a straight face. How can one reconcile the man who painted these works with the man who rhymed ‘wocket’ with ‘pocket’? The bits of press the paintings have received attempt a marketable solution: he was two people. Highlighting only his dark, existential canvases, they tell a Jekyll & Hyde narrative, turning Seuss into a werewolf of suppressed emotions that would only emerge in the darkness: a cat smoking becomes an alter ego, a black background becomes a subconscious abyss. And while it’s an easy story to sell with his darker works, satisfying our romantic desire to build any artist into a mysterious, unknowable persona, it cannot explain the remainder of his art that is missing such tormented psychology.

Must these sides be reconciled, though? Can we ignore his farcical reputation to consider these works as themselves? For Seuss, separating art from artist is unfortunately well-trodden ground: in 2021, six of his books were discontinued for racist caricatures and stereotypes. This brought his wider legacy into serious question, but oddly changed very little for his paintings; they were already drowning under the weight of their signature.

This obsession with authorship runs far beyond Seuss, of course. The fine art world is an industry of names with works attached, not the other way around. Yes, it’s important to credit the hand behind the brush and often the story behind an artwork can further its beauty, but there’s more to art than personal narrative. Not every painting is a self-portrait. Great art can speak for itself, and it’s worth letting Seuss’s canvases try.

There is one Dr Seuss canvas that has escaped his signature. In the corner of his Green Cat with Lights, stark yellow letters read Stroogo Von M. It was a rare canvas he displayed to the public in the entryway to his home. “That’s my Stroogo Von M.,” he would say when visitors asked, hoping to receive an honest opinion free from the influence of authorship.

On more than one occasion, it’s said that a guest replied, “Oh yes, I’ve heard of Stroogo Von M.”

Illustration by Amelia Freeden