Dr. Seuss properties TM & © 1937-2010

Opening September 28, 2010

The Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art is pleased to announce that our next exhibition will showcase rare and historically significant pieces of original artwork by Theodor Geisel (aka Dr Seuss), dating back to the late 1920’s. The exhibition will feature published and conceptual illustration art and sculpture that has been loaned from numerous private collections. 

In 1938 Geisel hand carved and painted fewer than a dozen sets of three silly sculptures in response to Walt Disney’s successful Mickey Mouse merchandise campaign, and just a handful of them remain in existence. Two will be on display at MoCCA for the first time in a museum exhibition. Also included in the exhibition is an interesting collection of nearly 50 character illustrations that were presented by the artist during advertising and merchandise think tank meetings in the early 1970s, depicting the renowned eccentric animals that have long been the hallmark of this beloved children’s book author, including Horton the elephant, the Lorax, Grinches, and the artist’s beloved alter-ego, the Cat in the Hat.

About the Artist:
Theodor Seuss Geisel (American, 1904–1991)
Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, began his career as a little known editorial cartoonist in the 1920’s. His intriguing perspective and fresh concepts ignited his career, and his work evolved quickly to deft illustrations, modeled sculpture and sophisticated oil paintings of elaborate imagination. Dr. Seuss is currently best known as one of the most beloved and bestselling children's authors of all time, having written and illustrated classics such as Green Eggs and Ham and How The Grinch Stole Christmas! Geisel was also a political cartoonist for PM Magazine during World War II, as well as a contributing illustrator for Vanity Fair and Life. He had a long, successful advertising career, he was an Academy Award winner for his wartime documentaries, as well as his animated short film, “Gerald McBoing Boing.” His unique artistic vision emerged as the golden thread which linked every facet of his varied career, and his artwork became the platform from which he delivered 44 children’s books, over 400 World War II political cartoons, hundreds of advertisements, and countless editorials filled with wonderfully inventive animals, characters and clever humor. Geisel single-handedly forged a new genre of art that falls somewhere between the Surrealist Movement of the early 20th Century and the inspired nonsense of a child’s classroom doodles.

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Exhibitions

Help MoCCA present
  Is This the Al Jaffee Art Exhibit?
 an exhibition that spans the many decades of the career of the inimitable AL JAFFEE, famous for his long creative association with MAD magazine.

Donate to fund the exhibition via Kickstarter!

The exhibition will showcase a selection of Al's amazing, all-new illustrations from the just-released biography, Al Jaffee's Mad Life (written by Mary-Lou Weisman). The drawings chronicle his childhood in a Lithuanian shtetl and his traumatic loss of his mother in the Holocaust. The exhibition will also feature original art from his Mad Fold-Ins, and other classic work from his career at Mad magazine and elsewhere. The exhibition is scheduled for Fall 2010, please check our website for details.

The exhibition will be curated by Danny Fingeroth and Arie Kaplan. Your donation will be used to cover the expenses of the exhibition, including shipping, matting, and framing of the artwork, promotion, and special events with Al Jaffee!

Born in 1921, AL JAFFEE was a member of the first graduating class of New York's High School of Music and Art (where his classmates included future Mad colleagues HARVEY KURTZMAN, AL FELDSTEIN, and JOHN SEVERIN). Jaffee worked as an editor, writer and artist for STAN LEE at Timely (later Marvel) Comics during the 1940s. Then, in 1955, Jaffee joined “the Usual Gang of Idiots” at Mad where he's been a mainstay ever since, entertaining generations with his Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and Mad Fold-Ins. Despite repeated requests, Jaffee refuses to retire, and is frighteningly active, including still doing the Fold-Ins for Mad.

For more information about the irrepressible Al Jaffee please read this article in the NewYork Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/arts/design/30genz.html