Odd post but didn't know where else to share! About Dr. Seuss...
I thought this was pretty cool!
Dr. Seuss, the Mad Hatter: A Peek Inside His Secret Closet
Dr. Seuss had a unique remedy for writer’s block. When the late author, the alter ego of Theodor Seuss Geisel, was penning his beloved Beginner Books for Random House in the 1960s, he’d have his editor in chief, Michael Frith, over to his house, where they’d work until the wee hours. And when they’d get stuck, according to “Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel” by Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel would open a secret door to a closet filled with hundreds of hats. Then, he and Frith would each pick a different hat, perhaps a fez, or a sombrero, or maybe an authentic Baroque Czech helmet or a plastic toy viking helmet with horns. They’d sit on the floor and stare at each other in these until the right words came to them.
Yes, as it turns out, the creator of the “The Cat in the Hat” was quite a collector of chapeaus, the more plumed and flamboyant the better. And now, a touring exhibition, “Hats Off to Dr. Seuss,” makes the connection between Geisel’s headgear obsession and his art explicit. Featuring 26 of Dr. Seuss’s hats, as well as rarely seen paintings Geisel made for his own amusement, the show kicked off at the New York Public Library and Animazing Gallery in Manhattan in time for the 75th anniversary of the storybook, “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.”
The Seuss exhibition, which lands at Dennis Rae Fine Art in San Francisco next, is set to tour the United States until December of this year. We asked exhibition curator, Robert Chase, co-founder and president of Chase Art Companies, to explain to us how hats appealed to Geisel’s penchant for the absurd.
MUCH MORE HERE: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/dr-seuss-the-mad-hatter/