jimflora

jimflora

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Norwalk, CT

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James (Jim) Flora is best-known for his wild jazz and classical album covers for Columbia Records (late 1940s) and RCA Victor (1950s). He authored and illustrated 17 popular children's books and flourished for decades as a magazine illustrator. Few realize, however, that Flora (1914-1998) was also a prolific fine artist with a devilish sense of humor and a flair for juxtaposing playfulness, absurdity and violence. Cute — but deadly.

Flora's album covers pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. Yet this childlike exuberance was subverted by a tinge of the diabolic. Flora wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives.

Taking liberties with human anatomy, he drew bonded bodies and misshapen heads, while inking ghoulish skin tints and grafting mutant appendages. He was not averse to pigmenting jazz legends Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa like bedspread patterns. On some Flora figures, three legs and five arms were standard equipment, with spare eyeballs optional. His rarely seen fine artworks reflect the same comic yet disturbing qualities. "He was a monster," said artist and Floraphile JD King. So were many of his creations. Ben Sisario, in the New York Times, observed that "Flora's designs are magically simple distillations of Cubism, Surrealism and cartoon madness, with playful figures and instruments floating in planes of color."

JimFlora.com exhibits samples of Flora's fine art, commercial assignments, sketches, prints, books, and memorabilia. Our goal is to bring Flora's work to renewed prominence. We have published (through Fantagraphics) three anthologies of Flora art, and several more are planned. Working with the Flora family we are producing and marketing prints (in several formats) of the artist's idiosyncratic images. Flora spread paint on paper. We're spreading Flora over the planet.

Jim Flora once said that all he wanted to do was "create a little piece of excitement." With much of his work, he overshot his goal.

Visit http://jimflora.com to view historical galleries, rare works, photos, and news about Jim Flora art.

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Shag:
If you look at my paintings, you'll see Flora's influence, as well as that of Deitch, Kimball, and other illustrators. That period of jazz-influenced, minimal, Cubist, wacked-out, avant-garde illustration and animation remains my favorite, and is the base upon which I've tried to build my own body of work. Sometimes I paint an object and realize, "Oh no—that's how Jim Flora would have done it!" That usually requires me to paint over said object and try to do it again more "Shag-like," whatever that means. Flora did it like nobody else.

Chris Ware:
Jim Flora's illustrations have that almost impossible-to-attain quality that work done for commercial consumption rarely has: his drawings and designs are still interesting and lively today, not being rendered moot by forgotten fashion trend, taste, or faded cultural association. On top of this, he was obviously a serious artist who enjoyed doing his work. In other words: he was actually good.

Lane Smith:
Jim Flora was a big influence for me, and I was inspired by the spontaneity and animation in his work. While designing album covers in the early '80s for groups like The Dickies and Oingo Boingo, I stumbled on Flora's LP covers. I was excited and depressed at the same time. I realized his stuff was so much more new wave or punk—or whatever—than what me and my peers were attempting. He was fresher, more innovative, and just better. Later when I became a kids' book illustrator, I found Flora's books. Though not as animated as his album art, they were, and still are, more exciting than the majority of picture books out there. He was one of a kind.

John Canemaker:
Exciting eyeball jazz, that was Flora. Simultaneously primitive and modern—a cartoonish blend of Rousseau and Picasso, Miro and Bill Traylor.

Tim Biskup:
"This is going to change the way that I draw," I said out loud in a record store. I was holding an LP called Shorty Courts The Count. The cover seemed to be moving. The balance of the shapes and colors was so perfect. After a few minutes, my eye made it to the bottom right corner. It said, simply, "Flora." With a bit of searching, I found it was Jim Flora. I've been a huge fan ever since, and my drawings were forever changed for the better.

Gene Deitch:
In the 1940s, Flora's stuff just sent me into a graphic buzz, and I was brazenly imitating his style in my work.

Jason Lethcoe:
Jim Flora has a special genius all of his own. When I recently discovered his work, it left me wondering where he had been hiding all these years. I find myself gazing for hours at his paintings and emerging both inspired and disturbed. He's a true original!

Pete Docter:
Flora's work features great modernist design and eye-catchingly expressive cartoon characters—and neither loses out to the other. There are not many artists who can do that, and no one did it better than Flora.

Gary Baseman:
Jim Flora's surreal images pop off the paper and into the viewer's subconscious. The album covers he illustrated are visual jazz—very playful and improvisational. They're very cool.