Dr. Seuss and His Midnight Art

Where the world bends, unquestioned

The Art of Dr. Seuss Collection, Anticus Gallery. Photo by the author

“Red fish, blue fish!” wasn’t exactly what I expected to see walking through the doors of Anticus Gallery in Scottsdale Old Town.

Singing my heart out to my Spotify list on the Waymo ride there, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect.

Claude promised an unforgettable gallery hopping adventure, and I took it at its word. Who would’ve thought little old Phoenix — a cactus-sprouting desert town — to be an art collector’s mecca.

“Why don’t you like green eggs and ham?” Horton the Elephant and Cat in the Hat seemed to ask, as they greeted me from adjacent walls of the gallery with their goofy smiles.

Dr. Seuss was an integral part of the reading list back in our homeschool days. Thing One and Thing Two were our first Halloween costumes.

But Dr. Seuss the artist?

As I looked around the room, my gaze swiftly crashed onto the Sabine woman’s plump round buttocks.

One lopsided pom-pom of blonde curl sitting on top of her head like something a toddler pinned there as a joke.

Mouth open as if she just remembered she left the stove on. Hoisted like a minor inconvenience — a rolled up carpet going up a flight of stairs — onto the shoulder of a bronze-skinned centurion with a greenish pom-pom tree atop his helmet. A pair of improbably cheerful breasts draping the soldier’s back.

The other Seussian creatures riveted to the scene, expressions ranging from stupor to alarm to undisguised curiosity for what might happen next.

Dusty greens, pale ochres, a sky the color of old linen — all working to diffuse the provocation of the scene. Its bewildered heroine dissolving into the clouds behind her, as if to make it safe. But for whom? The usual audience? Or the artist himself?

Not exactly the Dr. Seuss I remembered reading with my kids.

Still, not bad for someone who got his first break through an ad in a bug spray campaign after “having been tossed out of Boni & Liveright, Harcourt Brace, Paramount Pictures, Metro Goldwyn, three advertising agencies, Life, Judge and three public conveniences.” (letter to Whit Campbell, 1927, via Artsy)

Someone who later used his pen to skewer the likes of Hitler and Mussolini as the chief editorial cartoonist for PM Magazine — a scrappy, leftist New York newspaper.

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I move on to the bursts of color on the opposite wall. The emerald greens, the candy-apple reds, the warm buttery yellows glowing against white space, anchored by black linework and a long black frame of The Flower Pot Cat.

My name for it: The Audacity of the Stem. Thin, wavering, a little vulnerable and impossibly long, with tiny leaves scattered along the way.

The flower at the top with tiny yellow petals is orbiting a bright red heart-shaped center, glowing at the top like a little sun.

Then, at the bottom, there’s a tiny figure of the Cat in the Hat. Mischievous, energetic, confidently marching forward, carrying this absurd botanical skyscraper as casually as if he’s delivering groceries.

That innocence is classic Dr. Seuss: the world bends into absurdity, but the characters never question it.

The whole thing is a visual equivalent of a child saying, “I caught a fish THIS big!”

Which is what Theodore Seuss Geisel was doing at night, when no one was watching. He was creating what he called his “midnight paintings” — a practice he kept almost entirely hidden from public view during his lifetime.

The tenets of surrealism — surprise and juxtaposition — came alive there, uninhibited. An artist famous for joyful public art keeping a secret visual life for decades.

Why did he keep this part of himself hidden?

Was it only to protect the image he’d spent a lifetime building? Or were these paintings the strange place he could go to and stay for a while when no one was keeping score?

Through the window, I see my Waymo clumsily finding its way to the corner of Main and Scottsdale.

The Cat in the Hat is still smiling at me mischievously with that impossible flower on its head.

Horton the Elephant is still hatching his egg on the opposite wall, faithfully watching over his incredible world.

One hundred percent!

Look Again, a museum companion card used in some of the discoveries in this essay, is available here.

The Abduction of the Sabine Woman — The Art of Dr. Seuss Collection
The Flower Pot Cat — The Art of Dr. Seuss Collection
“The Art Practice Dr. Seuss Kept Hidden from the World” — Jacqui Palumbo, Artsy
“These Dr. Seuss Cartoons Were Not Meant for Children” — World War II Magazine, via HistoryNet

Originally published at https://lookagainart.substack.com on May 23, 2026.