APATA – The Australian Performing Arts Teachers Association

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We love a Good Makeover!

Posted by Team APATA | May 27, 2020

Well they say there is nothing like a good make-over, but one could be walking a treacherous path when the do-over-for-the-current-times involves taking on a classic.

The art of Dr. Suess immediately brings a flood of childhood memories and like most households a collection we still have on the shelf today as an all-time favourite. Dr. Suess was a storyteller in the grandest sense of the word. Not only did he tell fantastical tales of far-away places, but he also gave us a unique visual language that carried his stories to new heights of artistic expression. Surrealism provided the foundation from which he built his career.

What Walt Disney was to film, Theodor Seuss Geisel was to art and literature.

Starting his career as a little-known editorial cartoonist in the 1920’s post the collapse of the family brewing business due to prohibition, Dr Seuss tapped into his creative juices providing intriguing illustrations, sculpture and oil paintings with an artistic vision that was to lay the way for an incredible body of work. A platform from which he delivered forty-four children’s books, more than 400 World War II political cartoons, hundreds of advertisements, and countless editorials filled with wonderfully inventive animals, characters, and humor. In fact a new genre was forged through is work inspiring doodles and nonsense for generations to treasure.

Meet Jim Mallory! In a bid to keep the creative juices flowing, Boston-based art director (and self-proclaimed typography nerd) has been reworking classic Dr. Seuss book covers for the current pandemic.  From ‘the places you won’t go’ to ‘the clorox’, these childhood classics received a remix for today’s crazy times. Other artists have also had similar riffs on Dr. Seuss book covers, including illustrator GRIPLESS and set designer Evan Siede.


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